


Young and Yearning

by Signel_chan



Series: Plucky and Prideful-verse [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Family Shenanigans, The Stress of Moving Houses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-08-16 18:49:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 63,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8113489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Signel_chan/pseuds/Signel_chan
Summary: Girls always want things; from toys to affection, there's always something on their want list. But for Lucina, growing up as a single child with her younger cousin always around, there's only one thing she asks for when prompted for gifts. The problem here is simple, her parents aren't exactly...sure that giving her a sibling is best. But Lucina wants what she wants.





	1. What Lucina Wants

When it had come time to pick out presents for Lucina’s fourth birthday, the little girl had one thing on her mind to ask for. Without even slight hesitation, she looked at her parents, a huge smile on her young face, and told them that she wanted a little brother. Her mother could barely hold back her laughter while her father, quickly going red in the face, shook his head at his daughter's request. “You already have your cousin, isn't that enough?” he asked, watching as the little girl shook her head defiantly and repeated her exact request.

She was given a baby doll and an hour of playtime with her squirming little cousin as a gift that year, her father telling her that he _was_ enough for her and that he was all she’d be getting. Lucina enjoyed getting to play with Owain by herself, even though she knew he wasn't going to do much more than roll over and squeal at her. But she knew that she could play with him at any time she wanted, due to him and his parents living with her and her parents, so the “present” wasn't much more than a way for her dad to dodge her request.

The following year, nothing had changed in Lucina's mind regarding a want of a little sibling, something she made clear when her mother asked her what she wanted. “A brother, please,” she replied, smiling as she did, but her smile faltered when she added: “And not time with Owain again.”

Robin reacted by nodding, patting her daughter on the shoulder in the most assuring way she could manage. “I'll speak to your father about this and see what we can do.” She wasn't entirely shooting down the idea, but at the same time, Lucina knew that if her father was going to have to actually be asked, all hope was lost. She knew how he acted in regards to small children, and how he played friendly about them in front of everyone but yelled and complained about them every night when he was in his bedroom. There was no way she was going to be getting what she wanted that year, no matter how much her mother talked to her father about it, and she had to accept it.

On her birthday, she woke up to a lot of presents she didn't ask for and the news that she was going to be spending a day soon with someone with a young baby, just so she could get the “sibling” experience without actually having a sibling. When that day came, she was stuck spending the time playing with her cousin and his little baby best friend, both of whom were a lot of fun but she’d asked for Owain to not be involved. He wasn't even allowing her to get to play with the baby much, as he thought he deserved the time more. The day there with those boys just wasn't what Lucina wanted in the end, and she needed to get it across to her parents that she deserved a brother (or at least a sister) of her own.

When she turned six, she once again asked for a sibling as a birthday present, kissing up to her parents for weeks beforehand to try and get them to go along with her wishes. Knowing entirely too well that her want of a sibling was the reason for her good behavior, Chrom wasn't going to fall for it, but Robin raised a good point when she cornered him the day before Lucina’s birthday to tell him, “You know, while having another child certainly isn't anything I want to go through, it would make this family feel more, well, family-like. Bring us all together more.”

“We're all together pretty well as is, we don't need to add another mouth to feed and body to make space for.” As they were talking right inside their bedroom, Chrom was able to look around at what space they had inside the room, shaking his head as he did. “Besides, this room isn't big enough for both of us and a child, and Lucina won't give up her bedroom for anything, I'd imagine.”

“You're going to make this an argument about _room_?” Robin asked, bewildered at what she'd just heard. “You've made your sister raise her child in her tiny bedroom, yet you say there's not enough room in here for us to raise another kid? Making excuses, I see.”

He let out a wavering sigh, not happy that she had called him out on his bluff so easily. “Yes, well, me bringing up my other reasons wouldn't quite go over well with you, so I went with the weaker argument instead.”

“Other reasons?” she repeated, raising an eyebrow. “Chrom, please, go on ahead and share these other reasons so that I can tell you how bad of an argument they make when put together.” The way he hesitated, taking in small, shaky breaths as he looked her over, was enough to make her lose faith in any strong point he could have made. “Really, at this point, you're just denying your daughter’s wish because you don't want to put in the effort.”

“Th-that's not it at all, Robin! Look, what happened when you had Lucina still weighs heavily on my mind, and I can't imagine making you go through that again.” Chrom's voice was wavering as he spoke, evidence that he still hadn't fully moved past the incident of his daughter's birth. “Not when there's so much on your plate this upcoming year as it is. Would you really want to be teaching, going to school for another degree, and raising another kid?”

Robin did have to think for a moment, her husband having actually raised a solid point there. She’d been working towards getting her master's degree for almost a year, another year still to go in her program, and with the reminder of what had happened the last time she was in school and pregnant, she almost didn't have the heart to continue arguing against Chrom's stubborn disapproval. “I guess I can see why you wouldn't want me to _now,_ doesn't explain past years, but it's a good reason for the present I suppose. Gods help you when you run out of friends with babies to pawn off on Lucy for her birthday, though. That'll be the year.”

“Then it's a good thing I've got someone for her this year, isn't it?” He reached out and flicked the tip of Robin’s nose, watching her scrunch it in displeasure. “Maybe some year she'll get a sibling for her birthday, but not this year.”

He opened the door to the room and left, fishing for his phone in his pocket as he walked. As he ducked into another room to call a friend about borrowing their baby, she stood there in the doorway, mocking him while she knew he couldn't hear. “‘Maybe someday but not this year,’ whatever! He's been saying that for years now, and Lucina's not going to stop wanting a sibling anytime soon. If I'm going to get him to rethink this for her sake, I'll have to get creative.”

It wasn't that Robin particularly wanted a second child--she was content with just Lucina and the family life they had, and the pains of the first time were still fresh in her mind. She vividly remembered the pain, the agony, the feeling of being completely helpless...and she remembered how overjoyed she was when she first held her little blue-haired baby in her arms. A second child wouldn't necessarily bring the same suffering, but they would bring the same happiness into her life, and until she had fought to her fullest for that, she wasn't just going to let Chrom's word be the law of the house.

At the same time, Chrom was finishing up his call to borrow a baby, grumbling as he put his phone back in his pocket. “What do they mean, they want to be invited in order for me to use their kid? We’re not having a party, and the only reason I'd invite them would be if he was providing food. They know this.” He was beginning to pace back and forth, trying to think of a solution to the problem, when Robin poked her head into the kitchen where he stood, catching him by surprise. “Gods, Robin, don't scare me like that. Could have triggered a heart attack.”

“You're too young and too in shape for that, I think what you're looking to accuse me of is triggering a guilt trip.” Robin grinned in his direction, while he still had his hand gripping his chest to calm himself. “I stand by what I told you, about running out of friends’ babies to borrow for this purpose.”

“I've got one for this year, that's what matters right now,” Chrom said, his heartbeat finally back to normal. “Why are you suddenly so insistent on making a case for us having another child? It's not really because Lucina wants a sibling, is it?”

“Actually, it is, but glad to see you think I'd want to go through that again.” Laughing, Robin placed her hands on Chrom's shoulders. “Maybe if it's me wanting a second kid instead of her wanting a sibling, you'll think about the situation differently.” She waited until he brushed her off to speak again, time during which she thought about how much she really didn't want to have another child. While the idea was nice, to get to raise another miniature version of her and Chrom combined, she was content with the one child she had. “We’d be doing it to make Lucina happy, you know.”

“Lucina being happy means very little when you could almost die again to give her what she wants.” Chrom’s gaze was rough, disapproving what he’d heard. “I'd rather her be unhappy and you be fine than her possibly not even getting that sibling after all and you being dead.”

Robin frowned at the idea of her possibly dying, but shook it from her mind when she remembered that she wasn’t in this argument to advocate actually having a second child right then. Her intentions were merely to keep Chrom from permanently putting the idea down. “I’d love to at least try to really make her happy, but I can see your point as to why we can’t,” she conceded, letting her head droop a bit. “Let’s just get through tomorrow with her borrowed baby, I suppose.”

“I’m glad you’ve begun to see things my way,” he told her, gently wrapping an arm around her and kissing the top of her head a couple of times. “We don’t need a second child in this family, not when the one we’ve got is perfect the way she is.” He let his hold on her linger for a few moments, until his phone started ringing again. “Gods damn it, why is _she_ calling me now? She’s in the house with us!”

Laughing as he let go of her, Robin watched as Chrom took his phone out once more, glaring at it as he did. “You know how your sister gets sometimes, she gets stuck doing something and needs one of us to bail her out. You want to see what’s up or should I?” Based on his hand-wave as he answered the phone to see what the issue was, she assumed it was the latter option, and when he left, grumbling as he headed towards one of the other bedrooms in the house, she was left to look around the empty kitchen. There was very little space, a fact she’d gotten used to in the years they’d lived there, and the lack of room continued throughout the house; their living space was so small that she could hear every word of the conversation between brother and sister taking place somewhere across the building.

If they were to do what their daughter wanted and have a second child, they would have to make some serious lifestyle changes in order for it to work, finding a new place to live the top of the list. Her eyes, shifting around the room, ended up lingering on the front of the fridge, where schedules for both of the families in the house were drafted. Just looking at everything they all had going on, between work and social commitments and raising kids, there wasn’t exactly time to be spent changing up how they lived in order to commit to having a second child. Maybe it was for the best that Chrom had found a kid to borrow for the following day’s events, and maybe it would be best if he could find another one for the next couple of years.

* * *

Her eyes fluttering open at the first sign of light coming into her bedroom, Lucina knew what the day she was waking up into was. She shot up, throwing her blankets off from herself and her bed, just to jump onto the floor and make a mad dash for her bedroom door. She didn’t bother looking at what time it was—it just needed to be morning time, which it clearly was if there was sun entering her room. The door was opened quickly, her not bothering to stop it from hitting the wall, and she ran down the hall from her bedroom, knocking first on her parents’ door, then on her aunt and uncle’s door, before making it to the living room, where she flopped on the floor and waited.

This was going to be the day she finally got what she’d been waiting for, and she was so excited for it that she didn’t care that people were trying to sleep. She needed her mom and her dad to come out to where she was and tell her the good news, the news that she was going to be getting a sibling (but hopefully a brother) for her birthday. It was the only thing she’d asked for, evidenced by the fact that there weren’t any presents laying around for her, and so it had to be the only thing she got.

“Lucina, what are you doing up already?” It wasn’t the voice of either of her parents, but hearing her dear aunt talk to her was a good sign. Maybe she’d be the one telling her the news instead? “It’s too early for you to be awake, even if you’re probably super excited about what today is and all that. Go back to bed for a little bit, will you?”

“I can’t, Auntie Lissa,” she replied, kicking her legs a few times there on the floor. “I’m too awake to go back to bed. I want to get my birthday present now!” Her aunt crouched down to be next to her, and when the little girl looked at her face she saw that she looked incredibly tired, like she’d been woken up without getting much sleep at all. “Please, just get my mom and dad so I can get it!”

After yawning, another sign of how tired she was, Lissa shook her head. “No can do, missy. They’ll give you your present when it’s a decent time. I don’t know why you’re actually awake this early, but you really should go back to bed.”

“I’m awake because I want my present!” Kicking her legs a bit more, nearly hitting her aunt once in the process, the girl started to raise her voice as she proceeded to continue on with her protesting. “It’s my birthday, I want what my mom and dad are giving me, and I want it right now!”

“Don’t scream, please, it’s way too early…” Lissa knew that pleading with her niece wasn’t going to work, so she took matters into her own hands, picking the kicking girl up and carrying her out of the room. “Here, I’ll just bring you into my bed and you can try to sleep in there with us until it’s not this early. Either that, or you go to your room and sleep there.”

Lucina, well-aware that hitting her aunt to try and get her to put her down was not an appropriate course of action, gave a huffy sigh. “Fine, Auntie Lissa, I’ll come to your room and sleep again. But I still want my present.”

“I get you, birthdays are always so exciting when it comes to getting presents!” After setting the girl down on the ground so that she could open the door to her bedroom, Lissa poked her head in to make sure everyone else was still asleep before pushing the door open further. “Here, come on in, you can sleep in my spot on the bed and I’ll find something to do to keep me awake,” she said, pushing her niece to get her to enter the tiny bedroom. “I don’t need to sleep nearly as much as you do.”

The young girl, following her aunt’s nudging, stepped inside and immediately regretted agreeing to doing that. “Auntie, there’s no room on your bed,” she whined, waving a hand in the direction of said bed, where most of the space was taken up by a grown man and a young boy, both fast asleep. “I don’t wanna have to try to sleep close to Owain or Uncle Vaike, please don’t make me!”

“Then why did—oh, Lucy, I won’t make you lay there then, no problem.” After yawning once more and rubbing at her eyes, Lissa looked at her niece and saw how close to tears she was becoming at the prospect of having to share that bed. “Here, since it’s your birthday and I try to do nice things for people on their birthdays, why don’t we go through some pictures and stuff while we wait for everyone to wake up? Would that be fun?”

Judging by how quickly the girl’s face lit up at the idea, it certainly would be fun. Lucina waited patiently (like she didn’t want to in regards to her parents waking up) as her aunt rifled through a few of her dresser drawers and then through her closet, pulling out stacks of papers and folders that were most likely filled with all sorts of pictures. “Why do you wanna show me this now?” the girl asked as her aunt started laying some of the papers out, beckoning for her to sit down on the floor to start looking. “What’s gonna be so cool about any of this?”

“I don’t know, I think it’s fun to just look back on old things sometimes,” Lissa replied with a shrug, flipping through one stack and gasping when she saw a particular picture in it. She pulled that one picture out and set it in front of Lucina, going back to her searching while she let the girl look at it. “That’s at the first graduation at the school after I started working there. You’re too little to remember it, but there’s a picture to remind you.”

Peering at the picture with wary eyes, Lucina tried to find people in it that she recognized. Her parents and her aunt and uncle were easiest for her to find, but there were a few others that she knew from how often she got taken over to the school. But as she looked, she couldn’t seem to see herself, prompting her to ask, “Is there me in this?”

“Of course you’re in it, you’ve been to every graduation there since you were born. You’re probably hiding behind your dad’s leg or something at that point, honestly.” Shrugging, Lissa went back to her searching, laying out a couple more pictures that she had found. “But see, isn’t this cool already? You’ve gotten to see an old thing, and now you’re going to see more.”

“This one’s from when you got married, I know this,” the girl said, pushing the graduation picture away to look at one of the full-family ones from her aunt’s wedding the previous year. “I got to be flower girl, and I was so pretty!” She pushed that one aside as well, reaching now for a holiday picture that had her scrunching her face in confusion. “Auntie Lissa, what’s with this one?”

After looking at the picture once more, understanding her niece’s question once she saw it, Lissa put the stack she was still going through to the side so that she could focus on her explanation. “Well, uh, what do you want to know about it? It’s from back before you were born, so if you’re wondering where you are, that’s—“

“I’m not in this picture?” The distress in Lucina’s voice was clear, and she was getting louder as she got more concerned. “But Auntie Lissa, I’m in all pictures with my mom and dad! Where am I? And why’s…why’s my mom like that?”

“—Lucina, please be quiet, I don’t want you waking Owain up by being so noisy! And you’re in the picture, you’re just not _in_ the picture, does that make sense?” Taking the picture for herself, she admired her young self for a few moments before sighing, setting it down to explain better. “You see, before babies are born, they live inside their mommies, which is where you are in that picture. See, look here, that’s you!” She pointed to the slight curve that was noticeable to Robin’s stomach in the picture, a sight that only had Lucina scrunching her face more. “You’re not very big in this picture, and you didn’t ever get really big at all while still in your mommy, but that’s where you are!”

“Is…that why I can’t have a brother or sister?” Lucina asked after several seconds of sheer horror at what she’d just learned. “Is it ‘cause my mom did that with me and she doesn’t wanna do it again? Oh no, I don’t wanna hurt my mom to get a brother!” Tears were starting to well in the girl’s eyes, and when she blinked they dripped down her cheeks. “Please, please please _please_ I can’t make my mom hurt!”

Hiding the picture to keep the girl from getting more distressed, Lissa quickly pulled out a picture of young baby Lucina fast asleep in her arms, from an unmarked time after her birth. “Here, why don’t you look at how little of a baby you were and not cry over maybe other babies. There’s no reason for you to feel bad about wanting a sibling, I bet your dad begged his parents for a baby sister until they gave him me, so…” The girl snatched the new picture and stared at it, trying to make sense of the fact that little version of her was in the other picture in such a strange place, all while her aunt regretted suggesting this activity as a way to pass time.

“Pssssst, Lucy!” a small and tired voice whispered, catching the girl’s attention and dragging it away from the picture. She looked up on the bed to see Owain looking down at her, grinning as he did. “You in _my_ room!”

“I am in your room, yes,” she replied, tossing the picture towards her aunt before standing up to be more at the same level as her cousin, “and you are s’posed to be sleeping.”

He replied by laughing, nearly knocking himself off of his perch as he tried to get closer to his cousin; his mom gasping and grabbing him to steady his balance was the only thing that kept him from falling. “I not sleepin’, it okay!” he laughed, reaching at Lucina with one hand while the other tried to push his mom away. “You in here! Why?”

The girl sighed, waiting until her aunt had situated her cousin down on the floor beside them, at which the boy started trying to make a mess of the pictures they’d been looking through. “Auntie Lissa wanted to show me things for my birthday. And she wanted you still sleeping, which you aren’t.” She pursed her lips together, looking every bit as stern and disapproving as her father could on occasion. “Owain, why are you so bad?”

“Not bad!” If there ever was a time that words didn’t mesh up with actions, it was then, as Owain was reaching for one of the pictures, just to grab it and promptly start trying to rip it up. For a few seconds, Lissa was obviously considering stopping him, but she chose not to when she saw how her son couldn’t grasp the paper well enough with both hands to do any damage to it. However, Lucina felt like her point of saying he was being bad was proven and she smiled at him smugly as she watched his attempt at being destructive. “Lucy, you get ‘icture too? Help?”

She shook her head, doing what her aunt wasn’t doing and taking the picture just to put it back on the pile it had come from—although when she saw what the picture was of, she picked it right back up and stared at it in horror. “Is this more of babies being inside their mommies?” she asked, tilting the paper so that her aunt could see it and swallow down hard before nodding, all while Owain still tried to take the picture to destroy it. “Oh no, I really can’t make my mom do that for me to get a brother or sister! I don’t wanna make her look like that!”

“Okay, wow, she wouldn’t look like _that_ , first of all, and secondly, that hurts that it takes you seeing me before Owain was born to realize that you don’t want to make your mom go through that again.” Now taking the picture back for herself, Lissa gave a fake sniffle as she looked at it, pretending to be hurt by what Lucina had said. And while the girl tried apologizing, having to deal with her cousin beating up on her a bit for making his mom cry, Lissa eventually dropped the upset act. “Besides, I think I looked pretty good then, even if I really clearly didn’t,” she said, tucking the picture somewhere in the middle of the stack. “That was after a whole lot of…well, it wasn’t fun and I promise, your mom wouldn’t have to deal with even a slightly similar experience!”

“But still, I don’t wanna make her hurt and get big to give me what I want.” Leaning back against the bed there in the room, Lucina closed her eyes and sighed. “But all I really want for my birthday is a brother, or a sister if I have to. I think a brother would be fun!”

“You have Owain, he’s like a brother, isn’t he?” Lissa asked, earning a side-eye from her niece as she explained, for what felt like the tenth time, that her cousin wasn’t the same as a brother would be, and that she wanted both if she could have them. “Hm, I guess I see what you mean there. Besides, it’s not like we’re going to always live together, maybe it would be best if you had a sibling to keep you company for when you don’t have Owain around.”

It took a moment for her aunt’s words to sink in, time during which Owain was giving a garbled and nonsensical explanation of why he was absolutely perfect for being in the position he was, and it was when he mentioned being little that Lucina hushed him. “I don’t just want someone to be around, I want someone little to be my baby sibling! That means Owain is not a good replacement brother, since he’s not a baby anymore!”

“Not a baby?” His lower lip jutting out, Owain started crying, pushing his head into his mother’s lap while she sighed and stroked his hair, trying to get him to stop. “No, baby! Owain _is_ baby!”

“Hush now, please, you are still my baby and Lucina didn’t mean to make you think you’re not,” Lissa pleaded, her calming efforts being ignored by the boy curling up against her legs. “She’s making a point that’s kind of true, you’re not a baby but you’re my baby, and that’s all she was saying, so don’t cry…” He still ignored her, even when she tried repeating herself, and so his crying got louder and louder until the sound of the bed moving scared the poor boy into silence, him turning to look up at what had caused the noise.

“It is far too early for ya t’be cryin’ like that, kid,” Vaike’s tired voice said, “and if it weren’t for the fact that your mom’s already tryin’ t’get you to stop, I’d be all over that myself. What’cha doin’ up this early, anyway? Can’t be time for bein’ up.”

Hearing her uncle talk was sending shivers down Lucina’s spine, because she knew him being woken up by her accidentally upsetting Owain wasn’t a good thing, but she wasn’t going to let her aunt take the fall for this one. “I made him cry, sorry,” she apologized, standing up and turning to face her uncle, who cracked a grin when he saw her owning up to what had happened. “I didn’t mean to, but I did, and now you’re up, and—hey!” She was caught by surprise when he reached out and pulled her in close, grabbing her into a big hug. “Uncle Vaike! What are you doing?”

“Huggin’ ya, that’s what it looks like.” He let go of her after what felt, to her, like forever, time during which Owain stopped crying, jumped to his feet, and wanted in on the hug as well. “Not now, kid, it’s your cousin’s birthday and that means she had t’get a big hug first thing in the mornin’.”

Hearing her cousin start to whimper again, Lucina said, “No, it’s okay if he gets a hug too, I don’t wanna make him cry more just because I’m here and stuff.”

“No need for this kindness business you’ve got goin’ on there, the boy’s gotta learn how to deal with others gettin' what he can’t, and cryin’ is no way to go about it.” Ruffling his niece’s hair as he spoke, Vaike was looking straight down at his son, who was rubbing at his eyes and trying to stop himself from crying more. “Now, once he’s stopped cryin’ like a spoiled kid, maybe then he can get himself a hug.”

“And back to bed, because it’s too early for any of us to be awake,” Lissa added, going back to the original point that had led her to bring Lucina in the room in the first place. “Which, if that’s going to happen, I guess Lucy should go back to her room. Gods help us if we try getting Owain asleep again if she’s still here.”

Lucina nodded, getting out of her uncle’s reach and heading for the door, trying to fix her hair with her fingers as she walked. “I’ll go back to my room, I promise,” she told them, opening the door and stepping out into the hall, not waiting for them to respond before she closed them in the room. Before she moved anywhere, she listened to see if they said anything about her behind her back, but all she heard was the adults beginning to argue about something relating back to crying, and that wasn’t anything she was interested in listening to. She also wasn’t interested in doing as she’d promised and going back to her room, knowing that admitting defeat and trying to sleep in her own bed was not going to solve anything.

The couch wasn’t the comfiest place in the house, but she’d heard stories of people living on it from time to time (not that she honestly remembered anyone ever doing that), so it must have been suitable for her to sleep on for a few hours while she waited for her birthday present. Sleep didn’t come very quickly at all, her mind wandering to thoughts about what she’d asked for as a gift and how she was beginning to second-guess wanting that after all, and by the time she did drift off she’d gone over a million ways to let her parents know she’d changed her mind on the whole sibling thing.

When she woke up once more, the house seemed to be the same as it had been when she’d fallen asleep, meaning that she hadn’t been out for very long at all. Defeated, she sighed and kicked her legs over the side of the couch, sitting up to make it look like she hadn’t been sleeping out there after all. “Looks like someone finally decided to wake up after all,” she heard her father say from somewhere just out of view, making her gasp in shock. “Did you sleep out here all night, Lucina? The excitement get to you too much?”

“N-no, I slept in my bed but woke up early and moved out here,” she replied, beginning to look around the room to see if she could find where he was. Judging by how he wasn’t in her line of sight, it meant that he had to be hiding around one of the corners, and she was too tired from just having woken up again to go searching for him. “That’s okay, right? It’s my birthday so I can do that…?”

“You can do whatever you want within reason, which sleeping on the couch isn’t exactly reasonable but I’ll forgive you this time.” He could be heard fighting with something wherever he was, as evidenced by the sounds of rustling paper and soft cursing, and she giggled when she heard her dad complain about something along the lines of “this dumb present”—after all, him complaining about a present meant that it couldn’t be what she’d asked for! “Lucina, why did you have to not be in your room like you’re supposed to be? You’re making this a lot harder than it should be.”

“I can go back to my room if you want,” she said, still giggling but trying her hardest to not let him hear that. She didn’t think she could explain why she was laughing, especially since all she really remembered of it was that it had something to do with her aunt telling her where babies came from. “Dad, if you really want me to, I can!”

“Don’t worry about it, Lucina, your father can handle what he’s doing without you needing to hide.” Coming into the room, the appearance of her mother, looking as radiant and lively as always, made Lucina jump to her feet and rush to hug her tightly. “Whoa, what’s this about? You’re not usually this affectionate this early.”

“I just wanted to hug my mom, that’s all.” Pressing her face into her mother’s side, Lucina sighed happily. “I mean, my birthday is a good day for me to play nice, so I’m gonna play as nice as I can! Maybe I’ll get what I want if I do!”

Bending down a bit, pushing Lucina away as she got more on her level, Robin shook her head and gave a solitary laugh. “I don’t think that’s quite how it works, Lucina. You know, the one thing you’ve asked for this year is kind of a big thing, and we’re not really sure if we want to get you that quite yet or not.”

“Oh, it’s okay! I don’t want it anymore!” The words clearly catching her mother by surprise, the wish being the only one she’d expressed for years, Lucina knew she’d have to explain what had caused her change of heart at some point. But right then, with her mother’s shocked expression in view and the muffled sounds of her father’s frustration in the background, it didn’t seem like the right time. “I’m sure what you got me instead is so much better, anyway!”

“Er, well, yes it will be, but you’ve always been so insistent on getting a sibling.” Standing back up, Robin rest her arm on her daughter’s head, the girl reaching up to wrap her own arms around it. “I appreciate the consideration you’ve clearly given to the situation, because it makes me feel much less guilt for turning you down over and over. But at the same time, it rather…complicates your gifts for today.”

Her face falling, Lucina dropped her arms and let her head tilt forward. “Lemme guess, I got another baby to watch today to make me not want a sibling?”

“You know your father and his gift-giving plans so well,” Robin replied, lifting her daughter’s head back up to continue using it as an arm stand. “We can’t exactly tell this baby’s parents the deal is off, not when your father made quite a few promises to them to get things into motion, so we’ll just have to deal with tonight’s meal being a bit louder than normal.” At the sound of Lucina beginning to protest that, she hushed her with, “Don’t complain, we made sure to get you something else too. It’s not a complete wash of a birthday, I promise.”

“B-b-but, okay, I guess!” Trying to shake her mother’s hand off with no luck, Lucina gave up her attempt and merely slumped up against her. “I don’t know why other babies are so great to give me, but I guess I’ll take this because it’s kinda-not-really what I asked for!”

“There you go, that’s the way to look at it. It’ll all be okay, especially when you see what we got you that’s yours to keep.” Pushing Lucina back up to standing, Robin’s head turned at the sound of Chrom loudly cursing outside of the room, at which she shook her head and laughed. “That is, if your father can get through wrapping it without breaking the thing.”

If she’d been sad about the turn of events, hearing that her father was in fact wrapping something for her made Lucina’s whole existence perk right back up. “I get a real present for once and he’s gonna break it?” she asked, trying her hardest not to laugh as she did. But the attempt was futile when her mother started laughing at the question, and soon mother and daughter were quickly both stumbling to the couch to fall onto it amidst their laughter. The laughter invited others to come check on the two, and soon the entire family was gathered in the room, half of them laughing and the other half trying to make sense of what was going on, aside from Chrom, who was red in the face and clearly frustrated at his failed attempt at wrapping his daughter’s present. It was still before noon, and Lucina’s birthday was shaping up to be one of the most interesting days in a long while.

* * *

Dinner that night was at the same restaurant it was every year for her birthday, and although the family had since grown too large to all fit around the table they’d originally shared, there was still a sense of fuzzy nostalgia that overcame the girl as they walked past their original table. Lucina couldn’t remember why it felt so familiar to her, but as they were being seated at the big-enough-for-everyone table, she was greeted with a story about how, when she was just a little girl, that one particular spot was where they were seated for a couple birthdays in a row, making it a special place in their lives.

“It looks like a table to me,” was the only thing she said on the matter, not wanting to think so much about birthdays past to focus on the one she was currently living through. Nothing of note had happened that afternoon, leading up to going out for dinner, and she was tickled pink to see her parents carrying with them the big, oversized present that they’d gotten for her in lieu of her original request. Of course, that present came hand-in-hand with what was going to be waiting for them at the table when they got there, but Lucina had decided somewhere over the course of the day that the second part of the present would be forgiven.

At least, it would have been, had one of the parents Chrom had roped into the day by borrowing their child not decided to invite himself to the dinner. “I just thought that, since you guys were going to have Kjelle with you tonight, maybe I could…you know, eat dinner with you?” Judging by the glare and silence he was met with, Stahl wasn’t getting his request filled by asking Chrom, so he turned to face the girl whose birthday it was, pleading in his eyes. “Come on, little Lucina, I even baked you a cake!”

“Oh, I do like cake,” she said, putting a hand to her mouth as she considered his offer, but as he tried to sweeten the deal further by showing her the exact cake he’d made, she couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s a really sad cake! Why’s it all small like that?”

“Because, uh…” He looked around, trying to find an excuse to give her, but all he found were disappointed faces looking back at him, coupled with one trying its hardest not to burst out in ugly laughter. “Okay, not fair, I didn’t even _think_ about eating any of it this time, which I wouldn’t do anyway because it wasn’t made for me!” He got up out of his seat, allowing the family to take theirs (even though his child was still sitting there, not even fazed that her dad was just kind of leaving), and gave a loud sigh when they were in their places without him. “Seriously, just because it’s a small cake, you’re going to leave me out? What kind of friends are you?”

“Come back in an hour to pick your kid up, Stahl,” Chrom flatly told him, no nonsense to be had in his voice. Despite another pleading protest starting, he did not change his stance on the matter, waiting until none of them could see or hear the man until he turned back to being a fun father as opposed to someone trying to get his way. “Now that he’s gone, we have someone you need to meet, Lucina.”

Already having been locked in a battle of stares with the unfamiliar child there at their table, Lucina nodded. “Her name’s Kjelle, right? She’s kinda funny.”

“Funny as in how?” Robin asked, wanting her daughter to clarify the statement, but all she got in return was a shrug and a hand-wave in the baby’s direction. “I see, you don’t really know why she’s ‘funny’, but you think she is anyway. Good to know.”

“Mom, I just think she’s funny! Look at her, isn’t she funny?” Still waving her hand, Lucina was beginning to get the baby to do the same in return, and while neither of them were accomplishing much aside from nearly hitting others there at the table, it was quite cute (at least, in a couple people’s minds) to see the older girl getting the baby to mimic her. “I think we should keep her around. Can we do that?”

“I don’t think we can do that, you saw how badly her father wanted to stay with her while she’s here with us, can you imagine what he would do if we tried to keep his kid?” Robin glanced over at Chrom, who was gripping the edge of the table, his plan of making his daughter despise babies to the point of never asking for one again not seeming to work. “Besides, I don’t think your father would enjoy having her around for very long, he doesn’t really think we need another child in the family.”

Lucina dramatically sighed, but before she could say anything, her cousin leaned over onto her lap, his face staring up into hers. “Lucy, you have me!” Owain proudly said, pointing a finger straight into her face, one that her eyes naturally focused on. “That good, hm?”

“I guess that’s good, Owain, but it’s not the same.” Remembering how easily it had been to make him cry when saying he wasn’t a baby, she made sure to stay away from that exact wording as she explained why he wasn’t enough, but he was clearly the best she was going to get. “It would be nicer if you were small and didn’t talk and just played like I want you to, but I guess you’re good the way you are.”

He gave a loud screech, waving that finger more into her face, which simultaneously startled her (because of the fear of him hitting her on accident) and the baby across from them. Not one to cry when things weren’t the way she preferred them, Kjelle reached for the first thing she could get her chubby baby hands on, which happened to be a complete roll of silverware, and she threw it the best she could. It didn’t make it very far, but the thudding sound it made as it hit the table once more was enough to startle Lucina more, as well as make Owain screech a second time.

For the first part of that dinner, the three kids were trapped in an endless cycle of screaming and throwing things, one that was most definitely annoying the people trying to dine around them. By the time there was food starting to appear on the table, the shenanigans calmed down and there wasn’t as much in the way of noise disruptions, but every so often one of the two younger children would let out a scream that would, in turn, set the other one off on doing the exact same thing. However, the appearance of food had its own set of problems, that being that now instead of silverware being what was tossed, it was whatever food made its way into Kjelle’s reach, and she could throw small chunks of her dinner a lot further than she could a couple of forks.

When her dad came back to pick her up, he was greeted with the sight of his child almost completely covered in food, and the two kids across from her looking pretty dirty themselves. “You let her waste all that food for a fight?” he asked, almost in disbelief that anyone could do such a thing. “She’s supposed to be learning to eat it, not throw it!”

“To be fair, she was the one who started it when she was throwing other things and watching as they didn’t disappear from her view.” Having been witness to everything that had happened, Robin felt she was most qualified to explain what had been going on, and so, before Chrom could interrupt her and tell a vastly incorrect version of the story, she continued speaking. “The others had fun throwing things back at her, and at each other, so I wouldn’t lament the loss of the food too much, Stahl. Besides, their cooks must be having an off night, it’s not exactly the most edible food.”

“Any food is edible food if you put your mind to it. I can’t believe you didn’t let me eat with you, then let her waste everything, and now you’re going to make me clean her up! Do you know how much yelling there’s going to be when I get home?” Stahl shook his head, taking in his arms the child who seemed to be upset that she wasn’t still sitting in her little high chair, rather than overjoyed at being with her father once more. “You’re lucky I like you guys enough to have let you borrow Kjelle like I did, or else I wouldn’t have done it without making you treat me to dinner too.”

“Go home, Stahl. You know what you’re getting for letting us have her for an hour, don’t push it.” Putting an end to the complaining, Chrom might have been acting like he wasn’t happy with his friend’s behavior, but it didn’t stop him from escorting the man to the front door of the restaurant. When he came back, he took his seat with a smile on his lips. “He wanted to apologize for being so unhappy, he said it was something about not having eaten and being somewhere with so much food,” he told everyone, before focusing his eyes on Lucina, as she ran fingers through her hair to get food out of it. “As for you, my daughter, he wanted to wish you a happy birthday, and he wanted to know if you enjoyed spending time with his little girl.”

“Yes, I really did!” she replied, pulling her hand away from her hair with her fingers caked in different kinds of squashed food. “’Cept I still would rather have a brother if I could get one, but I know, I am not getting one, so she was okay.”

“Then maybe we’ll work something out so that you can spend more time with her, I don’t know.” Shrugging, Chrom gave a sly look and accompanying smile in Robin’s direction, while she rolled her eyes, knowing what was coming. “And that’s why we borrow other people’s children, because I knew we’d find one that would get her to drop the wanting a sibling thing, eventually. No need to thank me.”

Robin pursed her lips together and closed her eyes, taking in a deep breath before she replied to him. “You’re only gloating because she’s given up on it right now. Give it a few weeks and I’m sure she’ll be back to how she always has been, tonight’s events just a memory. You’ve done nothing but temporarily pause her want. But yes, sure, you don’t need thanks for what you’ve done here today.”

“Don’t be so offended, and don’t be so negative either. Things are looking up for us in this situation now, and we both know it.” The smile on Chrom’s face grew smugger, looking back over at Lucina and how she’d gotten herself distracted from her parents by talking to her cousin once more. “Maybe next year we can do a birthday dinner for her that won’t require anyone outside of the family to be here. That’ll be the life.”

“The life, sure, but do you realize how hard that will be? You’re going to be fishing for another friend’s child to use, and I doubt anyone else’ll be having one.” Robin crossed her arms before her, sighing as she did. “Chrom, what you’ve done here is get us into a mess that there’s only one way out of.”

He scoffed, waving a hand in the air. “There’s plenty of ways out of this, and I’m sure tonight’s given us a good one. I’ll work something out with Kjelle’s parents, they’ll love having somewhere to toss her for a few hours at a time, and we’ll never hear our child ask us for a sibling again, ever. It’s just how it is.” Robin was still not believing him, even with how insistent he was, and with good reason: not even a full day after Chrom did as he said and arranged a couple subsequent meetings with their young dinner guest, Lucina was back to casually mentioning that she would appreciate having a sibling (more specifically a brother) in her life.

The look on his face when he heard the request once more was priceless, and when Robin saw it she couldn’t help but laugh, although she refrained from gloating like her husband had when he thought he was right. This was no joking matter, it was something that had become more serious than either of them could fully grasp—and as long as Lucina wanted what she did, they weren’t going to hear the end of it. So what was there to do? They didn’t want another kid, they couldn’t have one, it wasn’t going to work with the lives they led…

Yet, was permanently disappointing their daughter an option?

* * *

The summer that followed was one of the most hectic times that Lucina could remember ever experiencing, even if she herself wasn’t involved in most of what was going on. It seemed that every morning, something new had happened overnight that was tearing the family in different directions, and almost every day was spent with people constantly coming and going for various reasons. None of these visitors were even there to spend any time with Lucina, and they were distracting her parents from spending time with her, always wrapping them up in issues that belonged outside of the walls of the house.

She wasn’t jealous, but rather trying to make sense of everything that was going on to try and get involved if she could. Which, she discovered after walking into the living room while her parents and her aunt were loudly and tearfully arguing one night, wasn’t something that was going to be happening. Even trying to approach any one of the three of them while they didn’t have anyone else around only left her more unsure of what was going on around them, and so her attempts at getting involved were relegated to only when someone actively approached her for something. And that rarely happened, although when it did she found that she would rather have been left out.

There were only so many days that summer that she could be saddled with the task of playing with her cousin and his best friend before she would lose her mind on them, after all. But there was something different about being stuck with them on these occasions, because rather than them being the playful and inquisitive boys they normally were, it was just a lot of sitting around in silence or with someone crying. (And, Lucina noticed, it wasn’t just the kid known for crying at everything with tears in his eyes all the time, which only made the situation hurt more.) Since she wasn’t getting the time to pester her parents about what she wanted, she was beginning to take out those desires to be an older sister on the boys, trying to make sure they both smiled and had fun at least once a day when they were all together.

Somewhere in the middle of the summer, there was a day where Lucina found herself completely alone, the boys nowhere to be found when they normally would have been there at the house. In fact, she couldn’t find anyone who was normally there, aside from her father, busy working on things relevant to the coming school year. He’d brush her away every time she approached him, reminding her that interrupting his work wasn’t polite, but she wasn’t used to, well, being alone. For every day of her life to that point, she’d had at least one person around her paying attention to her and what she wanted at all times, and this was her first taste of being by herself.

It made her want for a sibling to always have with her intensify, but at the same time it gave her some insight onto why certain things she might not fully understand in her life were affecting people like they had been. She’d have to give her cousin a big hug the next time she saw him, that was for sure. But at the same time, she really wanted to talk to someone, anyone, at that very moment, and when the only person around was pushing her away, she couldn’t quite do that.

The entire day was spent with her keeping to herself, locked in her room drawing pictures of hypothetical siblings and coloring them to look just like her. When she heard the front door to the house opening that night, after a day of no sounds aside from her father’s occasional frustrated screams drifting into her room, she was quick to run out and see who had come into the house. Three well-dressed ladies and two boys who had probably looked nice at some point in the day were standing in the living room, finishing up a conversation that had most likely been started hours beforehand. “Oh, that would ‘splain why they weren’t here today,” Lucina said to herself as she approached them, doing as she had decided she would and hugging her cousin as soon as she could get her arms around him. “Where were you today, Owain? I was so sad and alone without you!”

“Get off’a me, Lucy! Too many hugs today!” Squirming until he was let go of, Owain puffed his cheeks out once he could see her face and how genuinely happy she was to see him. “Mama hugged me the whole day! No more hugs!”

“I didn’t know she did, I’m sorry…” Apologizing, Lucina looked up to her aunt, who was still talking to her heart’s content with the two other ladies. “At least she’s happy today, yeah? She’s been so sad so much…”

“Well if it isn’t miss Lucina joining us after all.” Bending down to pick her daughter up, Robin smiled at the girl as she grinned right back, burying her face in her mother’s neck while they hugged for a moment, only for her to be set back down. “I wish I could have brought you with us today, but my invitation was last-minute and I didn’t want to stress you out with searching for something to wear. I know how you get when you’re asked to dress nicely without much warning.”

The girl nodded, thankful that her mother hadn’t forgotten about her but instead had been considerate about the situation. “But where did you go?” she asked, pointing at the dress her mother was wearing. “Was it somewhere fancy? I like fancy places, even if they’re fancy-dress places.”

Robin responded with a smile, choosing to ruffle her daughter’s hair when she spoke. “We went to a wedding today, nothing too fancy but still something important.” With her other hand, she motioned to how both of her companions were wearing much nicer dresses. “I got invited to accompany them both as they fulfilled their duties as part of the groom’s party, because neither of them—“

“I don’t think we need to discuss _that_ small detail, Robin. I’m sure Lucina’s smart enough to realize why we needed you.” A finger to her lips as well as a quick glance to make sure her best friend still looked happy, Maribelle waited until Robin had given an understanding nod before she added, “Besides, making it a ladies’ day was a lot more fun than the alternative would have been.”

“I agree, letting it just be the three of us and the boys was nice, even if…” Her voice trailing off as she abruptly stood a bit taller, as if she were trying to shake something from her mind, Lissa looked around at everyone for a moment before she resumed her thought. “Well, if, you know, they would have been nice if they’d gone like they were supposed to. I just can’t believe that…”

“You don’t discuss it either! Gods, it’s almost like we’re aiming to ruin your day so close to its conclusion!” Maribelle playfully elbowed Lissa in the arm, both ladies laughing at it, although Lissa’s laughter was a lot more subdued than her friend’s was. That brought an end to their conversation, and after goodbyes were said and the two who didn’t live there at the house were gone, the night took on the same pattern that almost every night before it had.

The summer continued in its strange blaze of glory, everything falling apart and coming together in unexpected ways that Lucina was unable to understand and was given no explanation for. In the middle of July, they held a birthday party for Owain there at the house that was noticeably less exciting than one would expect a party for a three-year-old to be. In fact, most of the time they were supposed to spend celebrating, the adults just sat around talking amongst each other, leaving the collection of children there to try and find some way to entertain themselves. (Apparently forming a group with the intent of having a fake trial didn’t work when most of the kids were too young to understand what a trial was, but it was a fun way to pass the time.)

That night, when she should have been sleeping, Lucina was left laying in bed, listening to an argument brewing in the living room that had started sometime after sundown, when the front door to the house had been slammed open by, well, someone. She hadn’t been gutsy enough to check to see who had entered their house and started a fight with her father, but based on some of the things she could hear being screamed, she could only hope that it was someone who actually _belonged_ there.

After that, the summer seemed to get back to normal, even if the yelling and arguing flared up every few nights—but as long as the entire family was back in place, that was what matter to Lucina and her vague understanding of everything. There weren’t as many days of her being left alone or stuck with her cousin from there on out, and once the school year started again it was almost as if nothing had changed over the summer after all. It sure didn’t feel any different when she would get driven to her school in the mornings, her parents silent for the entire car ride there, and when she’d get picked up in the afternoons by various family friends because her parents were still at school, it was all blending into a long, boring routine in her mind.

If nothing had really changed, then something needed to, and she didn’t want to bring up her greatest want yet again and get turned down, but, to her, it would be something to spice up their lives. Her parents wouldn’t be able to spend as much time dedicated to their work if they had another child to raise, and that would mean that she’d get some more attention in the few hours each day she actually saw them. A sibling would give them something to talk about in the mornings before school, instead of the silence there always was. But she couldn’t ask, because to her the act of asking was pointless. They’d had such a crazy summer, even if the end result had been for it to be like nothing had happened, so why should she try changing that?

All it would take is one big shakeup in their lives to accomplish it, and little did Lucina know that the shakeup her family needed wasn’t anything to do with family drama, but rather something that they all knew was coming: a school conference taking place out of town.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes I am aware that there are some REALLY VAGUE things going on here, but can you blame Lucina for not knowing them? She's like 6. seriously.


	2. Kitchen Table Confessionals

During the middle of October, right in the center of both the semester at the high school and the one for Robin’s grad school classes she was still taking, the conference that Chrom had to attend loomed over everyone’s heads. He normally made some event of it, bringing his wife and daughter with him, but now that _both_ of them had their own schooling to work around, he was well-aware that he was going to be making the trip alone for the first time.

“Don’t you think missing one week of classes won’t be too bad for you?” he asked Robin while he packed his suitcase for the trip. She smirked at his question but shook her head, causing him to sigh. “Come on, you’re really going to make me go alone? I’m rather desperate at this point, going alone isn’t anything I want to do.”

“Then invite your sister or something, I can’t go and you’re not pulling Lucina out of classes to take her with you.” The girl, hearing her mother mention her name, squealed where she lay on her parents’ bed, kicking her feet against their pillows. “No, that wasn’t a good thing that I just said, Lucina. Why are you so excited?”

“I like spending time with my mom, even if I like time with my dad too.” Throwing her hands up above her head, Lucina broke into a huge grin. “But if I’m a good girl, will I get presents when you get back, daddy?”

“You know I’m weak for you acting so young and innocent, Lucina. Of course, I would have brought you back something anyway, but yes, you’ll get presents when I get back.” Tossing a couple of shirts into his bag, Chrom smiled at his daughter as she resumed squealing, her kicks picking up in intensity. “Whatever I can find in local gift shops, I’m sure there’ll be at least one something that’ll make you happy.”

She ceased her squeals and sat up, cupping her face in her hands. “Getting anything will make me happy, I promise! Even if I didn’t ask for it, any present is a good present.” Her parents both laughed at her honest comment, them both knowing entirely too well that she was easy to be pleased with anything she got as a gift, even if it wasn’t what she wanted. In this instance, however, there wasn’t anything she was expecting to get, so was there really anything that would disappoint her?

Being told to leave the room before her dad was done packing, that was definitely something that wouldn’t sit well with her. “Lucina, don’t you think you should hurry off to bed?” Robin asked after several minutes of clothes being thrown across the room more than they were put in the suitcase. “You have to go to school in the morning even if your father’s leaving, and I don’t want to be fighting with you because you stayed up too late with us.”

“But Mom, I don’t wanna go to _my_ bed right now,” she replied, returning to her laying down position up on her parents’ bed. “I like being here with you two!”

“Don’t backtalk your mother, she has your best intentions in mind.” Chrom’s eyes flickered up to his daughter for a moment, only for them to shift towards the bathroom door, the one door in the entire house that didn’t match any of the others, before ultimately resting on Robin’s serious expression. “Isn’t that right, my love? You’re suggesting for Lucina to go to bed because it’s best for her, correct?”

“Why else would I— _Chrom_ , I’m not suggesting that, if that’s what you think!” Becoming visibly flustered, Robin laughed and brought a hand to cover her mouth. “I can’t believe you would imply such a thing with her in the room!”

“I wasn’t implying anything, your mind’s the one that went there.” He smiled at her, her cheeks lighting up at the action, but before she could say anything to him he was clearing his throat and returning to look at Lucina. “Now go to bed, my sweet Lucina. I’ll see you when I come back from this trip, with presents for my precious little girl.” He held out an arm for her to come running into, and after some grumbling and reluctance, Lucina got off the bed and came to give her father a big hug and a couple of kisses, not wanting to let go of him when he pulled his arm away from her. “Go on, don’t prolong this. And, er, make sure to lock the door on your way out. We don’t need the distraction from the…packing I’ve got to get done here.”

Her head hanging a bit low, Lucina gave a very small nod at the order. “I can do that. Good night, Mom and Daddy.” Her feet were heavy as she walked around the piles of clothes her dad had created in his packing frenzy, not wanting to step in one and incite anger in an already stressful time. When she got to the door, she made absolute sure to turn the lock as asked before she pulled it shut behind her when she left, keeping her father’s words about what he needed to get done in mind as she did.

She was so wrapped up in the disappointment of being sent to bed without getting to spend those last moments with her father that she paid no attention to whatever comment it was her mother made once the door was closed. She did, however, hear something hit one of the walls, but all she could think was that her dad must have gotten frustrated at what had been said and needed to take the anger out on something instantly. That was an all-too-common occurrence, and while it normally resulted in things getting broken, Lucina hoped nothing would be broken that night; enough was going on with her dad having to leave for a week, she didn’t need to spend that time with her mom freaking out about how to fix something he’d broken.

Taking herself to bed was an unusual activity, because normally one or both of her parents came with her to tuck her in and read her a story before she fell asleep. Clearly getting Chrom ready for his trip was more important than taking care of their daughter! But sleep came easy for the girl, with it taking very little time between her curling up under her blanket and her drifting off for the night. When morning came, the mood in the house was a lot more somber than normal, no one really being talkative at breakfast and a gaping hole existing in the spot where Chrom normally sat. The one other thing that was off about the meal was how tired Robin seemed to be, as if she didn’t sleep much at all.

“Mom, why’re you so sleepy today?” Lucina eventually asked, leaning up against her mother’s arm as she talked. “Did you stay up all night talking to dad before he left?”

“Something like that, I suppose,” she replied, that furious reddening of her cheeks happening once more. “But he had an early flight out that I had to get him out to, it wasn’t ideal but it’s what happened. Don’t think too much about it.” Since she had no reason to do otherwise, Lucina took her mother’s words to heart, although she saw that her aunt was sitting across the table trying her hardest to not laugh at something that had been said.

The week that her father was gone went on without incident, life not changing too much just because of his missing presence. Every morning, the family all still had breakfast together before splitting off into their normal groups to go on with their day, and after each day at school Lucina was still being picked up by her designated caretaker for the day, to hang out at whatever place she was expected to be until either her mom or her aunt and uncle came to bring her home. Nothing changed about any of that, even if the thrill of going home was diminished by knowing that she wasn’t going to get to see her dad there at any point that night. Even at his busiest, Chrom always tried to make time for a few minutes just with Lucina, and she definitely was missing that.

When he came home, bearing gifts for her that she had honestly forgotten he’d said he was going to get, she didn’t let go of him for a solid ten minutes as she told him each and every thing she’d learned at school that week. “Yes, yes, it’s all very interesting and you’re smart for remembering it this well already,” he said, pushing her off after he’d had enough of her affection. “Now let me take care of some other things before you spend more time with me like this, being gone for a week means there’s a lot for me to take care of.”

To say she wasn’t a bit crushed at him brushing her away would have been a lie, but Lucina put the biggest smile she could manage on her face and nodded. “Got it, Daddy. I missed you a whole lot, and I wanna talk to you forever about everything that happened while you were gone. Please don’t be too busy.”

“I’ll try not to be,” he promised, although if Lucina would have seen the glint in his eyes at the moment he spoke she would have known that he wasn’t planning on following through with those words. After he unpacked and the whole family gathered for a meal that was spent talking about his trip and the essential things he’d missed at home, he and Robin snuck off into their bedroom and locked the door behind them—something Lucina discovered an hour or so later when she tried to see if she could talk to her dad then. Her fist banged on the door a few times to try and get his attention, but she was met with silence, another crushing blow to her spirit.

“Why’s he not letting me tell him stories about what I did while he was gone?” she asked herself as she stomped to her room, her footsteps as loud as she could manage to make them. After slamming her door shut, causing some of the pictures on the walls to rattle in place, she flopped onto her bed and grumbled, “Maybe he just doesn’t care about his little Lucina anymore. Maybe he met better kids while he was gone and doesn’t like me anymore!” She punched her blankets, tears welling up in her eyes as she dwelled on the issue. “I missed my daddy and now he doesn’t like me!”

She wasn’t laying there crying for very long before her door was pushed open, a blue head of hair poking its way inside the room. “Hey, Lucina, what are you doing in here?” Chrom’s gentle and, for some reason, tired-sounding voice asked, him pushing the door the rest of the way open to enter the room. At the sight of her father, Lucina rolled over and buried her face in her pillow, screaming as she did, which only made Chrom furrow his brow in confusion and come closer to his daughter, sitting on the edge of her bed and resting a hand on her back. “This is because I wanted to have a private conversation with your mother before I talked to you, isn’t it?”  
“You said you’d try not to be too busy and you were,” she choked out, her pillow catching her tears. “And all I wanted was to get to tell you things! You missed so many things!”

“I know I missed a lot of things, that’s why I had to speak with your mother first so she could tell me the most important ones. You weren’t the only one who missed me being here, Lucina, and honestly you’re being a bit selfish by getting so upset that you weren’t the only one to get my attention.” Chrom, clearing his throat, began rubbing at his daughter’s back to try calming her down, but her crying was only getting harder. “Now, don’t cry like this. You’re a big girl, you know how to handle being in the wrong without crying like a baby.”

“I d-d-do, but I made you mad at me!” Lucina gave a loud sniffle, her nose completely blocked thanks to her crying, which only frustrated her further. “I was a bad girl and you’re mad at me and—“

Chrom cut her off by trying to make the sound of zipping something closed. “Enough of this pity party, Lucina. I’m not mad at you, and if I were, do you think I would have come to check on you?”

“No, but…” She sniffled again. “Maybe you were told to. Mom says things and you listen to them all the time.”

“Me coming in here was not at your mother’s urging, I can assure you.” Laughing, Chrom moved his hand from Lucina’s back to running through her hair, catching tangles and knots in between his fingers. “I wanted to check on my precious child and make sure she wasn’t upset that I put talking to her a bit lower on the priorities list than I know she would have liked. Now what was it that you had wanted to tell me?”

It took a little bit for Lucina to calm down enough to talk about everything she had wanted to with the excitement she’d possessed when her father first came home, but once she was back in a happy mood she was going on and on about all sorts of different things. Her sharing took them past her bedtime and required Robin poking her head into the room to check on them to put it to an end, but even at that point she was still only halfway through her week of very specific events that she felt her dad needed to know. Going to sleep was a non-negotiable act, however, and so her storytelling time was put to an early end without any guarantees that it would get to continue on again at a later time.

With that in mind, Lucina made sure to tell as many stories from that week as she could every morning before school, and even though she knew she’d run out eventually, just knowing that her father was obligated to listen to her sharing things before he went to work for the day brought joy to her heart. After a few mornings she was done, and the morning routine went back to how it had always been, but the excitement of having gotten the chance to catch him up on so many things lingered within her for a few weeks, replacing the heartache that had taken hold when she thought she wasn’t going to get to tell him anything.

It was after the memory of that happiness was beginning to fade that something new came along to change up the morning routine. Normally, by the time Lucina came out of her room in her school clothes, everyone was already sitting at the table in the middle of their breakfast, but when she came out one morning she saw that her mother was missing from the mix. “Where’s Mom?” she asked, taking her chair as her father pushed her normal breakfast bowl to in front of her. “Is she still sleeping?”

“She wasn’t feeling the greatest this morning and chose to sleep in, I believe,” Chrom answered, now pushing a glass of milk in his daughter’s direction. “She’s been having a rough go of it the past few days. The stress of her classes is catching up to her, I think, and so she deserves to sleep in as long as she’d like today.”

Lucina shrugged the situation off, believing what her dad was telling her without a second thought. Across the table, Lissa was raising her eyebrows at what had been said, but didn’t dare open her mouth to say anything for whatever reason, although Chrom’s quick glare at her might have done the trick. At any rate, it was something that was moved past due to no one talking further about it—until Robin, fully and properly dressed as if she was going to work after all, joined them at the table. She had a tight-lipped expression and looked like she was, as Chrom had said, not feeling all that well, but when she sat down and reached over to give Lucina a quick hug, she seemed to be the same as always. “I have something I need to tell all of you,” she said, her free hand fidgeting where it rested in her lap, joined quickly by the other one as the hug ended. “But for the sake of not making everyone late to work I’m going to not say it right now.”

“You can’t just announce you’ve got something to say, only to not say it,” Lissa replied, glancing to Chrom with more of a suspicious expression on her face than she’d had before. “That’s, like, totally not okay. We’ll be dwelling on it all day at this rate!”

“Yes, and that might just be how I’d like it to be.” Hearing a groan of disappointment from Lissa made the corners of Robin’s mouth tick upward, but when she looked to Chrom and saw how he was now just as confused as his sister was, the smile disappeared. “Er, don’t you think I should wait on saying anything, Chrom?”

“I would make a judgment call on that if I knew what you were talking about. You told me not that long ago that you weren’t feeling good and that you were going to miss work today, and yet here you are, dangling something over our heads that I have no clue what it could be.” Without taking his focus off his wife, he lifted an arm and made a hand gesture of shutting something to his sister, as she had opened her mouth to give a suggestion. “Robin, please, we won’t be late if you just tell us whatever it is.”

She leaned back in her seat, her straight-lipped expression turning more into a grimace as she moved, but after thinking about it for a moment she closed her eyes and nodded. “Yes, you’re right, we won’t be late if I tell you whatever it is,” she repeated, opening her eyes to show that they were shining brightly. “Except I _know_ you, Chrom, and I know you won’t take this news well at all.”

“It’s nothing to do with your classes, is it? If you’re telling us you’ve decided to drop them I won’t say I’m upset with the decision, but I would have liked to have been part of making the choice.” She shook her head and his eyes shifted down towards the table as he thought about what else it could be, making the hand motion in Lissa’s direction a few more times as she’d start trying to make outbursts containing her guesses.

“Mom, what is it?” Lucina asked in her softest voice, grabbing her mother’s arm and holding it tightly. “Is it a good thing or a bad thing you’re gonna tell us?”

“It’s a good thing, at least, it is one for you,” she replied, looking over at her curious daughter and patting her hand before sighing and giving another nod. “I’m honestly surprised no one’s picked up on it yet, with how often I’ve been feeling tired and unwell as of late. Then again, I didn’t quite catch on to it until yesterday, and so after class last night I made a quick stop to get…well, something I wasn’t sure I’d ever need again.” One of her fidgeting hands reached into the pocket of the light jacket she was wearing, pulling out something that she held up in front of her with no fanfare or flourishes. Over the sound of the other adults at the table gasping, Chrom actually getting to his feet in surprise, Robin added, “And, well, I wouldn’t put all my stock into this thing, but…”  
“You better be playing some joke on us right now,” Chrom said, moving one hand to his mouth with the other now pointing towards the plastic stick his wife was holding. “This isn’t funny and you know it. You know how I feel about that.”

“If I was playing a joke, do you think I’d have gotten so realistic with everything leading up to this.” Dropping the thing she was holding on the table, she too stood up and grabbed Chrom’s outstretched hand, taking it into her own with a smile. “I told you that we’d be late for work if I shared this news now. You’re not going to let us leave until you’ve gotten every possible question answered about this, huh?”

“I’m not going to ask anything about this, actually,” he replied, pulling her in closer to him, “because I don’t think there are any answers I don’t already know, and the ones I might not have completely I can always ask later.” He dropped the hand from in front of his face to allow him to lean forward to kiss her, the time they spent with their lips locked leaving a perfect opening for Lucina to grab whatever it was that her mother had brought out that everyone was making such a big deal about. It wasn’t very big and didn’t look like anything she’d seen before, which only made her more unsure about what was happening. On one side there was a little indent in the plastic that had two tiny blue lines in it, but that was really the only thing that Lucina noticed about the stick.

She set it back where she’d gotten it from before her parents stopped kissing, and not long after that they were on their way out for the day, her sitting in her seat behind theirs in the car listening to them still talk about what had happened on their way to her school. The thought to ask what the stick was for did cross her mind a couple times, but whenever she felt that asking wouldn’t interrupt them, their conversation would pick right back up. Trying to follow what they were saying was difficult, because it was almost as if they were talking quietly to keep her from listening in, but there was one word that got mentioned enough that it stuck itself in Lucina’s mind.

All day at school, as her classmates chattered and behaved like they always did, she sat and thought about the stick and that word her parents had been using, wondering what it all meant. Asking her teacher wasn’t something she could do, because she didn’t want her teacher sending home a message to her parents bringing the whole thing up. Lucina enjoyed being a well-behaved girl, and the fear that what her parents were talking about was something inappropriate was very real. That didn’t stop her, however, from taking matters into her own hands the first chance she got; the person in charge of getting her from school that afternoon was one Maribelle, and if there was anything Lucina knew about Maribelle, it was that if she had anything distracting her, she wouldn’t be very good at watching what the kids in her care were doing.

It wasn’t even five minutes after they’d gotten into Maribelle’s apartment that she was already calling someone to talk to them, leaving Lucina with young Brady as her only real worry with what she was going to do. “You’re gonna not tell your mom I’m doing this, right?” she asked as she reached for the computer that Maribelle had sitting on her living room table. “I won’t do anything bad, promise.”

Brady stared at her, trying to make sense of what she was talking about, but made no noise until she was opening the computer and its screen was lighting up her face. “Oh! Ma!” he cried out, getting to his feet and covering his mouth and nose with his little hands. He jumped around, repeating his cry several times before giving up on getting his mother’s attention back from whatever phone call she was having, sitting right back in the same spot on the floor he’d been in before.

“I just need this for one minute, really!” Knowing how to work a computer from the many times she’d sat with either one of her parents while they were doing work on one, Lucina carefully opened up every active window that Maribelle had left running until she found one that had a search bar available on it. Once she found that, she shakily typed in the word she’d heard—as she understood it to be spelled—and hoped that whatever came up would give her some answers.

She’d barely had enough time to look at the top search result before she heard Maribelle coming back into the room, and so she slammed the computer shut and put it back where she’d gotten it from, jumping onto the couch to look like she’d been doing nothing when the woman entered and saw her. The look on Maribelle’s face was one of focus, as she listened to whatever was being said on the other side of the call, and she took a seat right next to Lucina to be present to watch the kids while still having her conversation. “I…don’t really know what else there is I can say to you about this right now, and that’s heartbreaking to me. I’m not sure who I can tell you to turn to for help, either,” she said into her phone, glancing over at the blue-haired girl lounging next to her. “Listen, Ricken, I’d love to keep talking about this but—yes, I know, you don’t want me to hang up. You didn’t want me to when I had to get Lucy. I know.”

“You don’t have to hang up just ‘cause I’m here, miss Maribelle,” Lucina assured her, holding her hands up innocently. “I won’t listen to what you say.”

Mouthing a thank you to the girl, Maribelle continued on with her conversation. “Er, maybe I won’t have to leave again after all. You really think that staying on the phone with me is smart in this situation? She’s territorial. A real animal. And you think that talking to another woman is going to keep her from losing her mind on you?”

Lucina, going against what she’d said and listening to Maribelle’s words after all, put her hands together and twiddled her thumbs a bit, wondering if there was any way for her to get back on the computer to keep with her search. She thought she’d have a chance when Maribelle stood back up and started pacing around the room, but as she never really left it was next to impossible to do anything under her nose like that. Even when she did step out for a moment, when Lucina reached for the computer again Brady got back to his feet and charged towards her, climbing up onto the table and laying on it so that it couldn’t be moved from underneath him.

That led to, when Maribelle came back in the room, her covering the receiver of her phone to ask, loudly, “What are you trying to do in here, Brady?” all while Lucina remained awkwardly on the couch, not going to say a word about how he was keeping the computer out of her hands. The boy, with his basic grasp of speaking, waved an arm at Lucina and tried telling his mother what he’d seen her do, but all that came out was something that apparently sounded like him asking to be moved to sitting with her. “You can get up on the couch yourself, sweetie,” she reminded him, taking her seat once more and gesturing to the open space between her and Lucina. “Sorry about that, my little Brady is acting strange right now and I needed to speak to him before I let the moment slip away. Now what were you saying about her behavior?”

“I need to know what my parents were talking about,” Lucina mumbled under her breath, crossing her arms over her chest. “I need to see that computer again.” Her wish was granted a few moments later, after Brady had gotten up on the couch like his mother had told him to, because without him in the way Maribelle was reaching for her computer herself.

“Okay, I’ll do you a favor and look this up. Having been in her shoes before, sort of, I can say that this is all quite suspicious,” Maribelle said, flipping open her computer and watching as it loaded the windows exactly as they’d been when Lucina had closed it. “Huh, I don’t recall making this search earlier today. How funny that it seems someone _tried_ searching—no, Ricken, hear me out on this one! Someone seems to have known we were going to be talking about this, even if their spelling is atrocious.” Lucina shrank back at the insult at her attempt to spell the word, but when Maribelle reached over to ruffle Brady’s hair, saying, “I cannot be too disappointed that my child is a genius already, I suppose. I’ll have to teach him that it’s ‘pregnant’ and not ‘pregnit’, but he’s so young that I can let this error slide.”

In all honesty, Lucina didn’t hear even the slightest of differences between the ways that Maribelle said the word, but she wasn’t going to say anything about it. She was going to let her think her son typed in the search, and that was that. Before Maribelle changed what the page was on, Lucina did look over to make sure that the top result did say what she had first saw, and when she found the word _rabbit_ on the screen she knew that she hadn’t made that up. All this secrecy and hushed conversation, and it was about rabbits? She didn’t even know that anyone in her family had wanted a rabbit!

When her father picked her up later that evening, Lucina had every intention of asking about the rabbit thing, but he stopped her before she got the chance. “We’re going to have to have a family discussion tonight,” he said, not looking away from the road as he drove them home. “After your mother is done with her class, we’re all going to sit and talk about what’s happened today and what it means.”

“Okay, I like that,” she replied, putting her hands in her lap and smiling contently. “I don’t know what’s going on and I want to.”

“Like you always do, Lucina. Like you always do.” Readjusting how he was sitting so that he sat a bit taller, Chrom finally looked up to the rear-view mirror, his daughter in plain sight in its reflection. “But enough about all that. You have fun today at school and at Maribelle’s?”

All the fun Lucina could think of directly related to her search for answers, so she tried to come up with something else to say, ultimately deciding on, “Yeah, miss Maribelle was on the phone the whole time so I just got to sit with Brady and listen to her talk. She’s really mean when she’s mad.”

“I would have hoped she’d have the decency to keep her personal problems away from my child, but…” Chrom took in a deep breath, exhaling as he continued to speak. “She doesn’t charge much at all to watch you, and you can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Even if the gift horse in question is Maribelle.”

“Miss Maribelle’s not a horse, silly,” Lucina laughed, looking up at her dad’s eyes as they were reflecting in the mirror. “And she was talking to someone about someone being weird. Like, really weird. She looked up a whole lot of things to try and answer stuff.”

“Sounds like her, getting into things that don’t involve her but trying to solve them all anyway. Oh well, Lissa might know a thing or two about what was going on, gods know she was on her phone in that office all day.” Breathing in again, Chrom forced a smile onto his face and gave a couple nods at himself. “I’ll get to that after the family meeting, it’s nowhere near as important as what else needs to be said.”

Lucina wasn’t quite sure how a _rabbit_ could be important, but she wasn’t going to ask about it at that moment, not when there was a specific time set aside for those questions. Once they got home, she went into her room to spend some of the time between then and her mother coming home for the night, but after the long expanse of time spent at Maribelle’s doing nothing, she didn’t really feel like sitting in there doing the same. She could have always gone to see what Owain was up to and hang out with him for a while, but when she left her room she could hear what sounded like punches being thrown at the wall in her parents’ room.

“Daddy, what are you doing in here?” she asked as she got to the door, cracking it open so he could hear her speak. “It doesn’t sound very good.”

“L-Lucina, you shouldn’t be in here right now,” he told her, stopping the punches to pull the door open out of his daughter’s hands, causing her to stumble forward at the force. When she looked up at him, gone was the happiness and calmness he’d had when they were in the car together, replaced with a worried and frantic expression that scared Lucina to see. “Just…let me handle things in here, and we will talk when we have our meeting.”

She took a few steps back, nodding rapidly as she tried to come up with something to say to him, but his panicked tone and overall air of something not being right rendered her speechless. He closed the door in front of her and she, now beginning to tremble in fear, ran back to her own room and slammed that door shut, jumping onto her bed and curling up, wrapping her arms around her legs and burying her head into her knees. She felt like crying, but tears never fully formed, and once her breathing steadied out and she wasn’t as scared, she moved to just laying flat on the bed until there was a knock at her door. “Lucy, Lucy come out,” Owain’s voice called, him very clearly pressing his face into the crack of her door. “Lucy please.”

“I don’t wanna go out there right now, Owain. I want to stay right in here.” Not liking her answer, the boy simply opened the door for himself and came into the room, his face alight with a huge grin. “No, that didn’t mean you come in!”

“I’m in here now,” he sing-songed, putting a finger to his cheek and squinting his eyes as he grinned harder. “Lucy _please_ come out.”

“You’re in here, why do you need me out of here now?” Sitting up, Lucina shook her head to try and straighten out her hair from how it had been bunched up as she had been laying down. “Owain, I don’t like this game. Something’s wrong.”

His eyes opened and immediately focused in on her, his grin faltering as he dropped his finger from where he’d been holding it proudly. “Wrong? No way!” he said, waving that hand as it fell to his side. “Wrong is bad, Lucy, and this is not bad. Please come out?”

Sighing, Lucina got off her bed and took a step closer to Owain, the boy jumping in excitement and running back to the door. “If this isn’t for something good, I’m coming right back to my room and staying here,” she told him, following right behind as he led her out of her room and into the living room, his feet carrying him as fast as he could. “I don’t know why you don’t use your big boy words to tell me what you need but...oh.” Upon getting to their destination, Lucina was disappointed to see that the only thing she’d been summoned for was absolutely nothing except an empty room. “Owain, this is far from something good.”

“No, this is very good!” he screamed, jumping onto the couch and bouncing on it, its old springs creaking underneath him. “Mama and Daddy left and that means no rules!”

Shaking her head, Lucina looked back towards the hall, hoping that even with his bedroom door closed and him doing whatever it was in there, her father would hear the noises being made and come investigate. “Owain, just because your mom and dad are gone doesn’t mean my dad left too.” Her reminder had him freeze in his tracks, scrambling to get down on the floor as to not get in trouble. “So it’s not a good thing.”

“Aw, but Lucy! I just wanna bounce,” he said with a pout, kicking the couch. “My mama never lets me bounce, so I wanna do it now.” His pout only got more pronounced when his cousin reminded him once more that her father was still around, and he was always the person to dish out the harshest punishments for breaking rules. That didn’t stop Owain from, after really considering her words, getting back up on the couch and resuming jumping. “Lucy, please! Come bounce with me, it’s fun!”

“I’m not doing it, Owain. No way.” However, because Lucina didn’t want to miss any potential fireworks that could spark from this, she chose to go sit at the kitchen table and wait for something to happen. The sound of the springs straining under the force of his bounces was the only noise she heard for a little while, until it began getting drowned out by shouting coming from her father’s bedroom. She wasn’t going to go check on him again, not after what had happened the last time, but his upset shouts were taking away from the potential excitement of watching her cousin get busted for doing something he knew he wasn’t supposed to do.

The front door opened long before that bedroom door did, the sounds of three people filing into the house before the door was closed and audibly locked. “Once again, thanks for being willing to get me today,” Robin could be heard saying, “because I think if I had needed to ask Chrom to do it…”

“Don’t even finish that thought, it’s all okay. I know my brother’s probably super stressed right now and he needs the time to think things out by himself.” Lissa laughed, the sound of which made Owain stop his bouncing once more, landing on the couch in a sitting position at the same time everyone came into the room. “Oh, hello there Owain! Sorry we didn’t take you with us, we just needed to get your aunt from her school and it didn’t need to be a whole big production or whatever.”

“It’s okay, Mama.” Owain’s voice gave away that he’d been doing something, as he was speaking while rather out of breath. “Me and Lucy had fun.”

“That’s good to hear!” Looking around the room to find the other child, Lissa smiled when she saw Lucina at the table, the girl giving her a wave once they’d made eye contact. “You’re such a great cousin to my little boy, so you’re going to make an excellent big—“

She was silenced by a hand that wasn’t her own covering her mouth, her eyes going wide as she tried finishing her sentence to not leave Lucina hanging. “Didn’t Robin just tell us not t’say a word ‘bout that ‘til after her and Chrom set everythin’ straight?” Vaike asked, not letting go of Lissa’s mouth until she’d given some sort of response that he deemed acceptable. Once his hand wasn’t keeping her quiet, she apologized to him for almost saying whatever it was she going to, and he laughed at the apology. “Ain’t me you almost ruined things for, y’know. Don’t need to be apologizin’ to me.”

“Well Robin wasn’t the one to grab my face to keep me from talking, so I figured I should say sorry to you for making you do it.” Her eyes shifting towards the floor, any sign of excitement she’d had before gone, Lissa took in a deep breath before heading towards the hall, her voice shaky as she told everyone, “I’m going to go make sure Chrom’s ready for this conversation we’re having, because I think that, um, it’ll be best if I do it.”

Before anyone could say otherwise, she had disappeared, leaving Robin to give Vaike a disapproving look on her behalf, him not taking it very well. “Oh come on, I was just enforcin’ what you’d asked us t’do for you. It wasn’t that bad.”

“We’re not having this discussion right here, not in front of your child and especially not in front of mine. That can come later, and it will come later.” Pursing her lips together, Robin didn’t say another word in his direction; instead, she walked to the table and took a seat next to Lucina, just like she had that morning. “Say, Lucina, are you excited for the conversation we’re going to have as a family?”

“I guess I am,” the girl replied, leaning her head onto her mother’s arm. “I don’t get why we need this, but it will be good, I think.”

Robin planted a kiss on the top of her daughter’s head, sighing when she broke away from it. “It’ll be a lot of work and a lot of change around here, but we can make everything great if we really want it. And I know you really want it.”

“I…do?” Looking up at her mother’s face and how the woman was nodding at her, she had a moment of wondering when she’d ever said she’d wanted a rabbit in her life, but she figured that if anyone knew what she wanted most, it would be her parents. “Oh yeah, I do, don’t I?”

“Looks like you two are already ready to get this over with.” Coming into the room with his sister following right behind, Chrom stood at the head of the table, resting his arms on the back of his chair while everyone else took their seats and looked to him. “Now, I can’t believe we’re having to have this discussion today, but after what Robin let us all know this morning, it seems it’s necessary to talk about this.”

“I’m sorry that we’re having to make all these changes here so quickly, but…” First running a hand through her daughter’s hair, Robin slowly moved it back over to in front of her, letting it ultimately end up resting on her side, her arm covering her stomach. “You know, sometimes things we don’t intend to have happen go ahead and happen anyway.”

“Why do we need changes to get a rabbit?” Lucina quietly asked herself, hoping no one would hear her, but at least one of her words was audible enough that her cousin across the table from her picked it up. His loud gasp, followed with a scramble so that he was standing in the chair he’d been sitting in, caught everyone’s attention, and despite his mother’s efforts to get him to sit back down, there was nothing stopping him from running with what he’d heard Lucina say.

“We’re gonna get a _bunny_?” His question wasn’t one that anyone was expecting, minus Lucina because he had just asked what she’d been hoping to since she’d made that search on Maribelle’s computer. “Or is just Lucy gonna?”

“No one said anything about a rabbit, Owain, sit down and don’t disrupt us again.” His voice stern and showing that he wasn’t tolerating anything less than perfect behavior, Chrom ignored the boy pointing across at Lucina and trying to explain that she had indeed said something, waiting until he was seated and silent before he continued on with the important discussion. While they waited, Lucina felt worry building up inside of her. Had the computer really lied to her about what this was all about? “Now, back to the changes. We can’t be rash in what we do, but we also can’t spend forever deciding what to do, or else we’ll not be able to get it all done.”

Bowing her head, Robin added, “I’ve been thinking about this all day, and perhaps suggesting we move would be the best course of action here? I mean, no matter how we shake it, we’re not fitting in this house anymore after this.”

“We’re not moving.” Chrom slammed his fist down on the table at the assertion. “That’s just how it is. This is our home, we’re not losing it just because we don’t ‘have enough’ space to raise another kid. We’ll make some changes, get rid of some stuff, but we’re not moving.”

This time, when Lucina asked something, she said it loudly enough to be heard by everyone. “Another kid? Where are we getting one of those from?” A silence fell over the table, no one sure who should have been the one to tell her the answer to her question. Her father coughed, pointing a finger in her mother’s direction, Lucina’s eyes following the motion until she was locking eyes with her mother. All at once, everything made sense to her, from her father’s unhappiness to what she’d been told right before they’d all gathered there at the table. Her mouth opening wide in shock, she let out the highest squeal she could manage, reaching over to grab her mother into a hug.

“I guess maybe Lucina didn’t understand what we said this morning after all,” Robin admitted, giving an almost pained smile as she was being shaken by her overjoyed daughter. “At least now we know she knows, right?”

“With the exact reaction I had hoped she’d refrain from, yes. Unintended children aren’t exactly something I find joy in dealing with.” Chrom glanced over at everyone present that wasn’t his wife and daughter for a second, shaking his head at them before looking back at the other two. “Oh well, no sense in squashing her excitement now. The time for that will come once we start rearranging her room to make space for this kid.”

If Lucina had heard that last part, she might not have been as thrilled as she was, but in that moment, all that was crossing her mind was the thought that she was finally going to get what she’d wanted for years: a sibling.

* * *

All Lucina could talk about for the following weeks was how excited she was about the news that at some point in the future she would be getting a younger sibling. It wasn’t possible to have a simple conversation with her without her sneaking in that news somewhere, and after everyone she told fact-checked with her parents to make sure that she wasn’t lying, they were all down for aiding her in her excitement. She would get picked up from school talking about how her classmates were excited for her, and would spend every moment at whatever home she was at after school (which, more often than not was Maribelle’s) just going on and on about what kind of sibling she hoped she would get.

“You know, Lucina, we’re not going to know what the baby is for quite a while, maybe you should focus on other things in the meantime,” her mother told her after patiently riding out those weeks of chatter. “Like, oh! Maybe you can focus on becoming the best big sister you’ll be able to be. Do you think you can do that?”

“But Mom, I can’t do that without knowing what sibling I’m gonna be sistering.” A pencil in one hand and a piece of paper in front of her, Lucina was attempting to write something down (most likely relating back to the baby) that she was planning on treasuring forever. “Now tell me if it’s a brother or sister, please and thank you.”

“Lucy, your mother’s right in that we won’t know for some time. Weren’t you happy enough when we showed you what it looks like right now? That was cool, wasn’t it?” Lucina couldn’t deny that her father’s reminder of the grainy little picture that showed something that apparently was a baby was pretty cool, but it wasn’t enough for her, a fact she stated as she scribbled something on her paper. Chrom sighed, propping his head on his hand. “This situation isn’t going to go the way you want it to, darling, and you’re going to have to accept that there are some things you can’t get out of it.”

“I just wanna know if it’s a brother or a sister. I hope it’s a brother, but I’m fine with either.” Her pencil moving wildly, she tapped the eraser end to her mouth for a moment before writing something else down. “But okay, whatever it is, what are we gonna name it? Can I name it? I wanna do that, if I can.”

Exchanging a look over their daughter, Chrom and Robin both shook their heads at her offer. “Sorry, but I think we’ve got a name, either way it goes,” Robin said, after the two silently argued with their eyes over which one of them was going to say it. “There was a name that we rather liked before you were born, and now that we have a second chance we might as well go ahead and use it.”

“Why does this make it sound like you purposely came up with a different name before we had Lucina just in case this ever happened again?” Robin shrugged at her husband’s accusation, which only made him sigh harder. “Last time was hard enough, I don’t think we want to go through this again, and you know it just as well as I do.”

“I’m not going to school every day now, plus I don’t do a lot at work, and overall life isn’t all that stressful. It’s not going to go nearly as wrong as it did last time.” Hearing the pencil Lucina was holding hit the table, Robin looked to the girl to see her staring back at her, confusion in her face. “No, we’re not going to talk about what happened, you’re too young to be subjected to that story right now.”

“Does this have to do with where babies grow? ‘cause trust me, Auntie Lissa already told me about that a long time ago, I can hear all about that again.” Lucina picked her pencil back up and resumed her writing, giving up on making real words and instead just making squiggles instead. “Is that what you’re talking about?”

Robin opened her mouth to answer, but Chrom cut in, drowning out her words with his own: “She said you’re too young to hear the story, we’re not going to tell you it. I’ll have a discussion with your aunt about teaching you what she did, because that’s not something I think she should have taught you, but the point remains that you’re not learning any more about this than what you already have.”

“Sheltering her if she knows a little bit isn’t the way to handle things, but okay.” Not enjoying having been spoken over, Robin peered over to see what Lucina had been writing before she’d given up—and was greeted with a wish list of everything the girl wanted regarding her sibling. “Er, Lucina, why are you writing this list? You’re aware that none of us get to pick a thing about this baby, right?”

“I can wish,” Lucina replied, pulling her paper away from her mother’s sight so that she could continue doodling on it. “I wished for a brother or sister for so long and now I’m gonna get one, so I’m gonna wish more about what they will be like.”

“You, uh, have fun with that, I suppose.” Shaking her head at what she’d seen, Robin’s focus went back to Chrom and how he looked displeased with what was going on, a common expression he’d had in recent weeks. “She’s really excited about all of this, and while I know you aren’t, I think you should give it a shot, if only just for her.”

Chrom inhaled deeply, stepping away from the scene to gather himself before he dared replying to the notion of actually being excited about what was happening. When he came back a minute or so later, he was giving an obviously faked smile in Robin’s direction. “It’s hard to ‘give it a shot’ when the last kid you had almost killed you.”

“I’m not discussing that anywhere Lucina can hear it, so please, if you want to talk about those details with me, make sure you do it somewhere in private.” Covering the girl’s ears so she didn’t hear what followed, Robin tacked on, a sly grin on her lips, “And besides, maybe actually talking this out with me in private will help you come to terms with it.”

“You want to—oh. _Oh_. By all means, if you want to move somewhere secluded to discuss this, I don’t think it would be too harmful.” Getting flustered to the point of grabbing at his shirt’s collar to have something to tug at, Chrom watched as Robin let go of Lucina’s ears and stood up, telling the girl to continue with her list-making as she wished. Once they were side-by-side, he was wrapping his arm around Robin, pulling her in closer to him as they headed towards their room. “So, are we really going to discuss things, or are we going to forego that for something better?”

“We’re going to discuss it,” she replied flatly, “and then after we’re sure Lucina’s gone to bed we can move on to other things. Gods, Chrom, do you really think we’re going to risk her listening in on us?”

He chuckled, squeezing her a bit tighter to his body. “She’ll come listen in to the conversation we’re purposely not having in front of her, and that’s acceptable? Where is your mind on this matter? Clearly not focusing on what’s important, that being the fact that you very well could die from what you’re going to go through.”

“Anyone can die from carrying a child, it’s not just me.” Dragging her feet to stop their progress, Robin managed to pull herself away from Chrom and narrowed her eyes at him when he looked to see what she was doing. “You’re worrying far too much about all of this. You were there when I asked the doctor about all that maybe happening again. She said there was no reason to think it would, remember?”

They hadn’t noticed that Lucina had gotten up from the table and was following them several paces behind, listening in to what they were saying. “Yes, but it doesn’t help that every time I think about you being pregnant, I think about how everything went so wrong last time. I don’t want to spend a second longer sitting next to you in a hospital bed than necessary this time, not sure if you’re going to survive or if the kid will.”

“I will be fine, and so will our baby. So will our Morgan.” The name being used by her mother caught Lucina completely by surprise, stopping her in her tracks as her parents continued on into their bedroom, closing the door tightly behind them. She shook the shock off and ran to try and catch up with them, but upon getting to the door and trying to open it, she found that they’d locked her out.

Pressing her ear up to the door to try and hear what they were saying on the other side proved difficult, but if there was anything she’d learned in the years she’d spent trying to gather information from family members, it was that she could do it if she tried. “I wish you’d stop playing this off like it’s magically going to be perfectly fine,” she heard her father say, his voice loud enough at points that she most likely could have heard him without being so close to the door. “It’s not going to be perfectly fine. At all.”

“You’re only saying that because of last time, and I get it. But it really will be fine, calm down about it. You stressing out will only make me stress out, and trust me, I’m going to avoid stressing out about anything.” The sound of someone moving something around in the room muffled whatever came next, but Lucina was able to make out the words “unless you stop being stubborn, that is” after the noise disruption.

Whatever the noise had been, it was probably something able to be thrown, because what came next was the sound of something hitting the wall next to the door. “Damn it, Robin, I told you the day you found out that we’re not moving from this house, so get that out of your head right now. This was the place we bought when we got married, we’re staying here forever and that’s that.”

“We’re not making two kids share a room for their entire lives, Chrom. It’s bad enough that there’s six of us sharing this house, can you really want to add a seventh into the mix without some changes?” Something else was thrown, softer than the first thing, after which Robin said, “I’m just saying, getting Lucina to share her room for any reason’s going to be a pain. Maybe us moving somewhere new would be for the best.”

“If this family moves, it’ll be over my dead body.” That was the last thing Lucina heard be said, not because the conversation stopped but rather because she was walking back to the kitchen table, her cheeks puffed out in anger. Her mother was right, she wasn’t going to be super happy about having to share her room, but she was in the same mindset as her father: she did not want to move out of their house, not for anything.

Taking her seat back at the table, she grabbed her pencil and finished making her list, writing at the top in the biggest letters she could fit in the space her interpretation of how to spell the word “sibling”, and at the bottom she wrote her own name, followed by one last message of “please don’t make us move”. With that completed, she hung it up on the fridge and took herself to her room for the night, ready to go to bed and see whatever was around the corner for her in life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes the opening paragraph is basically the exact same as the opening paragraph to chapter 6 of Plucky and Prideful. Yes I realize the implications of this. Don't worry.


	3. School Events for the Wrong Kind of Schoolchildren

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaaaaaaa this is days late and I apologize :cc

The ride over to the high school after the students’ last day of classes was a bit odd to Lucina; after all, she was used to going over there with her parents for night events that students would logically be at. But for every one of those events, there was one quite like the one her parents were actively dragging her to, and although this was a yearly event she still wasn’t a fan of having to go. “Why take me?” she loudly asked as she kicked the back of her father’s seat in the car. “Miss Maribelle can watch me, I hate going to things like this!”

“Lucina, dear, we’ve already explained why, in fact, Maribelle can’t watch you tonight,” Chrom replied, reaching behind him to grab one of his daughter’s ankles, her kicking his hand away with her unrestrained foot. “Hey, don’t kick me. You’re just asking to be punished when all is said and done here, aren’t you?”

“Don’t make me go to this!” Her exclamation punctuated with a couple more kicks, all while her father pulled his hand away and cursed under his breath at her stubbornness, Lucina then turned her frustrations towards her mother, who was sitting silently in the passenger’s seat. “Mom, please make him take me somewhere else! I don’t wanna go!”

Sighing, Robin turned to look at her daughter there in the back seat, a solemn and apologetic expression on her face. “Listen, if we could get away with having someone else watch you tonight, we would. But the list of people we trust with you is short, and they’re all busy tonight with one thing or another…and if your father had allowed it, neither you nor I would be going to this.” At the sound of those words, Chrom gasped and tried, in his sputter and caught-off-guard way, asking why she would say such a thing. “Because, Chrom, this ‘end of semester’ celebration always ends up with someone having a bad taste in their mouth from the night’s events. And I honestly don’t feel like putting up with it.”

“There’s nothing for you to put up with. What’s the worst that could happen, someone dying?” He gripped the steering wheel with the one hand he had on it, reaching back towards Lucina’s still-kicking legs with the other. “While that would be tragic, I don’t think that could top some of the other things that have happened during and after this party in past years. You’ve clearly got something you think is going to happen, though.”

“I do? News to me.” Her apologetic look turning to a more thoughtful one, Robin made sure to give Lucina a small smile before she turned back to facing the front of the car. “All I’m saying is, we’ve had a lot of bad things happen on this night before, and I have a feeling we’ll have another one here tonight.”

Not liking how negative her mother was sounding, Lucina stopped her kicking and leaned forward, trying to grab at her mother’s arm to get her attention without talking. This was because, as she’d stopped her kicks, Chrom had loudly coughed to clear his throat, intending on speaking as he too reached over to take hold of Robin’s arm. “I know, history has a way of repeating itself, but have faith that tonight will go perfectly fine. Why, tonight’s the first time you’ll really be showing our friends and your fellow teachers your big secret, isn’t it?”

“Please don’t try to act like me being pregnant is actually a secret, between you and your sister you managed to tell every other member of the staff within a week.” Giving a long sigh, Robin brushed Chrom’s hand off of her, but proceeded to grab it and lace her fingers in-between his. “But yes, tonight’s the first time I’ll really discuss it with everyone and I can’t say I’m overjoyed about that. You know how they all are, everyone’s a bit baby-crazy at times and I shudder to think about what things I’m going to be told, as if I haven’t been in these very same shoes before.”

“If they get to be too much, I’ll make them back off. Simple as that.” Squeezing her hand tightly, Chrom smiled, something that Lucina saw in his reflection in the rearview mirror. She was aware her parents continued talking about that, but they didn’t mention the baby again for the rest of the car ride and therefore she really couldn’t bring herself to care about whatever they were saying. Her anger about being stuck going to this party was greater than any interest she had in listening in on her parents’ conversation, and as long as she was stuck wearing dress shoes and a nice skirt she was going to be upset.

True to her father’s position there at the school, they were the first ones to arrive for the night, the parking lot outside of the building completely empty as they pulled up, but when Chrom was unlocking the front door so that everyone could come in a couple of other cars were already parking alongside theirs. Lucina hadn’t even gotten the chance to follow her parents in the building before she heard someone screeching her name, the voice enough to make her face light up at its high-pitched sound. “Lucy, you _are_ here!” a young girl screamed, breaking away from her parents to catch up to the blue-haired girl as she tried to head inside. “My mommy said you were gonna not come, and I was so sad, but you did come!”

“My parents made me,” Lucina replied, the words coming out of her mouth with a bit of anger attached. “Said that no one could watch me so I had to. Why are you here, Cynthia?”

Bouncing her head in excitement, her small, brown pigtails bobbing every which way, Cynthia waved back in the direction of her parents. “They made me come to get to see other kids. And to watch Brady, I s’pose.”

“I always forget he’s really your brother,” Lucina said while pushing the door (that had closed in the time she’d been standing there talking to Cynthia) back open, letting herself and the other girl in. “But that would ‘splain why miss Maribelle can’t watch me tonight. Why would she watch me if she isn’t watching Brady too?”

“I’unno,” Cynthia replied, turning back around once they were inside the building to watch as her parents came in as well, her father setting a teary-eyed Brady down on the ground next to her, “but I get to watch him today! And that’s fun!”

“You make sure your brother doesn’t get into too much trouble here tonight, understood?” Ruffling his daughter’s pigtails as she nodded eagerly at his command, her father looked to Lucina and smiled down at her, her reaction to give him a small wave in return. “And you, why don’t you learn a thing or two about being a big sister from my Cynthia? I’m sure she can teach you quite a bit.”

Her face lighting up with a smile, Lucina gave a big nod at the man. “You got it, mister Frederick! I bet Cynthia can teach me a whole lot, she’s such a good sister when she gets to be!” She gave him a thumbs-up and, while he didn’t seem to notice she had done that, he did crouch down to tell his daughter something else before kissing her and standing back up, taking hold of his wife’s hand before walking into the building proper. “You are a good sister when you get to be, right?” she asked after the two adults were out of sight, looking to Cynthia as she was grabbing her brother’s hand to try and calm him.

“I’m always a good sister, even if Brady isn’t around. Do you know how many pictures I draw him? They are not good pictures, but they are pretty!” ‘Swinging her arm, and therefore causing Brady’s arm to swing as well, Cynthia giggled. “Now do you think we’re gonna get to have lots of fun tonight?”

“I think so, yeah!” Lucina punched at the air, before the sound of the school’s front door opening again caused her to drop her arm and look as mature as possible. That air of maturity disappeared in a split second when she saw who it was that was entering, the first of the three coming in with such excitement that he nearly ran past the two girls watching him until he realized who they were. He skidded to a stop, his shoes slipping out underneath him and causing him to fall forward, hitting his face on the tile floor with a loud thud.

Rather than being concerned about their newcomer falling down, Lucina and Cynthia looked between each other, both trying not to laugh at what had just happened. “And this is why we tell you over and over again that running around isn’t the best way to do things,” Lissa’s kind and calm voice said, as she approached her son where he dramatically lay on the ground. “And if you keep falling like that, eventually you’re going to break your face and I don’t think you…” Before reaching down to help him up, she brought a hand up to her own face, tracing the crooked bridge of her nose for a second. “You’ll, um, not enjoy having a broken face, that’s for sure.”

“He’s just a li’l boy, he ain’t gonna be graceful and all that quite yet, if ever.” Wrapping his arms around Lissa’s body and pulling her back before she even got the chance to help Owain to his feet, Vaike rested his chin on her shoulder and chuckled, covering the sound of her dramatically sighing at the gesture. “Can’t let ya fix all his problems. Kid’s gotta learn how to take care of things for himself.”

“I disagree, but if you insist.” Lissa cast a saddened look down at her son as he slowly picked himself up, not fazed at having hit the floor in the slightest. “Hopefully we don’t find him later tonight on the ground again, I couldn’t stand to—“

“Enough ‘bout him, he’ll be fine. He always is. Let’s just get t’helpin’ Chrom with settin’ everything up as he wanted us to.” Without allowing for any kind of rebuttal, Vaike pushed Lissa along, her only getting enough time to look back and try to smile at Owain as he was standing back up, but his attention was already drawn to something else.

That something, naturally, was the presence of the other children. “Hi Lucy, hi Cynthy, hi Brady,” Owain cheerfully said, waving at each of them with an eager hand. “Didja see me fall down? It was fun!”

“I don’t know how that could be fun, but…oh, I’m sorry, Brady!” Although she had been in the middle of her sentence, Cynthia was distracted by her brother trying to pull away from her hand, wanting to go play with his friend that was now with him. “You and Owain play nice, I don’t wanna get in trouble for you doing something bad.”

“O’tay, ‘inthy,” Brady told her, her letting go of his hand so that he could take the few steps over to Owain just to grab him in a hug. The older girls, once again glancing between each other, laughed at the sight, especially with Owain trying to back out of the hug without hurting the younger boy’s feelings.

“My brother is really good at not letting go when he likes something,” Cynthia ended up explaining, giving a shrill half-whistle, half-screech to get Brady’s attention back. “But we aren’t gonna just play in here, people might come in and stop us. Let’s go find our parents and play near them!”

“You’re really good at taking charge, which is cool. Is that a big sister thing?” Taking note when Cynthia nodded in response, Lucina started walking alongside her friend, letting her lead the way for them and the boys, ultimately finding a spot against the wall of the main commons in the school for them to all sit down at. With there currently being so few people present, there wasn’t much to do aside from talk and giggle, unless the adults were present, in which case they were watching them. On occasion one of the adults would look in their direction, and depending on who it was and which girl it was that caught their eye, friendly handwaves were exchanged, but on one instance, it was Lucina looking out when her mother turned in her direction, looking amused as one of the few staff members that had filed in since they’d arrived was loudly explaining baby-related things.

The only reason she knew that was the topic of conversation was because every so often the speaker would reach towards Robin’s stomach and she would slap them away, making Lucina laugh as she watched. “My mom doesn’t like people touching her,” she said with a loud sigh, trying to stifle some follow-up laughter with her hand. “Why do people try to touch her now that she’s having a baby?”

“’Cause she’s having a baby, that’s why.” Closing her eyes, Cynthia leaned against the wall behind her and waved a hand in Brady’s direction as he and Owain had fun playing with one of the few already set-up chairs there in the room. “I ‘member back when your auntie got married, my dad made Brady’s mommy let me feel him. That was nice.” She reopened her eyes and looked over at Lucina, who was focused on the person still attempting to touch her mother. “Babies move in there, you know.”

“Mom says that the baby isn’t really moving right now, I know they do but this one isn’t.” A feeling of wanting to go tell the person to back away from her mother began to course through Lucina, but she shook it off, an old memory coming to her as she did. “Besides, I _know_ babies move in their mommies, I’ve felt one before.”

Even though she didn’t know exactly what baby her friend was talking about, Cynthia gave a sage nod. “I know you have, we know lots of babies so it only makes sense.”

“Are you two discussing babies? Mother told me you might, so I brought books from her shelves.” The voice was one belonging to someone new, and it was followed by the sound of a seemingly heavy bag of books hitting the floor, accompanied by the speaker taking a seat right across from the two girls, making a triangle in their positions. “I didn’t want to come tonight but maybe this will be fun after all.”

“Hello, Laurent,” Lucina greeted, while at the same time Cynthia gave a loud, “Hi, Laurie!” to their new friend. The boy, almost brought to a smile when he heard what Lucina said, went straight into a frown when Cynthia’s welcome was finished.

“For the last time, Cynthia, my name is Laurent and I would like you to use it.” Pursing his lips together, he waited for her to correct her greeting, but all she did was laugh it off, falling onto her side from the force of her laughing. “And that is why I did not want to come, because of little girls like you.”

Sitting back up, Cynthia puffed her cheeks out and reminded him, “I’m older than you, you know. Older and smarter and better.”

“I can at least read books without pictures in them,” he rebutted, opening his bag and pulling out the first book he could find, a chaptered book that looked rather boring based on its title and without-an-image cover. “And I will most likely spend tonight doing that, if you are going to treat me like this.”

Lucina, already looking back to where her mother had been just to find that the group of adults had moved to being somewhere else, frowned at the two’s bickering. “Can’t you please be friends tonight?” she asked, getting both of them to say they could, with varying levels of happiness as they spoke. “Okay, cool. Laurent, you don’t have a sibling, but you know a lot about babies, don’t you?”

“I already explained, Mother told me you might talk about this so she taught me some things about babies. She also packed my bag with many books on the topic, even though I won’t read them.” Laurent raised the one book he’d pulled out up. “This is what I’m currently reading, it’s a good book. Kind of childish, but good.”

The fact that the cover only had a title on it made Lucina never want to touch that book for as long as she lived, and Laurent talking about reading it while being three years younger than her didn’t sit well with her. “I…don’t know how you _can_ read that, it’s probably too hard for me and I’m learning good reading skills in school.”

“What a shame, your parents both work in a school and they didn’t teach their child to read before school could.” Lucina want to give a retort that she had indeed been taught to read by her mother back before she’d started school, but Laurent went on and continued speaking, only frustrating her further. “Mother insisted I learn to read alongside learning to speak, she spent hours a day teaching me the basics and I slowly grew to my current level.” Again he raised his book, opening it to show the girls the small print covering every page. “If I finish this by the week’s end, Mother might consider sending me to school a year early.”

“Ooh, ooh, school’s so much fun!” Cynthia, forgetting that she’d been bickering with Laurent before, shook her hands in excitement. “My favorite part’s when we all have nap time, it’s so great to lay there and not sleep. I tell stories in my head, they’re so much fun and if I ‘member them when I get home, my mommy and daddy love them!”

“That’s…adorable.” Going to reading his book, Laurent flipped a couple of pages before he said anything else, much to Lucina’s dismay. “Why don’t you two talk like you were, I think I’m getting to a good part of the book.”

“Why don’t you go find someone else to bother with your books, then?” The words were spoken before Lucina realized she’d done it, and the horrified gasps that came from everyone who heard her made her regret her decision to talk. “I-I mean, you can stay, we’ll talk and you can read!” She was turning red, Cynthia sitting next to her trying to hide her excitement that someone had told Laurent off, the boy in question quickly going back to reading without really paying any mind to what he’d been told. A silence fell over the three that was only broken by the sounds of playing kids next to them, until a little while later when the school started filling up with the smells of many foods—and footsteps came stomping over to the group of kids.

Looking up at who had come to join them, Lucina was surprised to see a familiar little girl being set down in the middle of the triangle the three older kids had made. “Your mom said you’re in charge of watching Kjelle for me tonight, and let me warn you, if I find anything on her broken when I get her back there _will_ be consequences. No one hurts my child and gets away with it, their parents be damned.” The girl in question, once seated on the floor, looked up and stared into her mother’s face with a sour expression, one that the red-haired woman returned without hesitation. She looked to Lucina for a moment, making a hand gesture to signify that she would be watching, before heading off to the quickly-growing group of people gathering there.

“I guess I’m watching Kjelle tonight,” Lucina stated, as if everyone there hadn’t just heard the threatening announcement of that fact. “At least she’s cool, I guess. She came to my birthday dinner and threw stuff at us.”

“That’s what babies do. They throw things.” Once again getting excited about the slightest thing, Cynthia reached out to touch Kjelle, only to have her hand be grabbed by the child’s impossibly strong one. “Ow, she’s hurting me! Why’s she so mean? We just met!”

Not even looking up from the page of his book that he was on, Laurent answered, “That’s Kjelle’s way of meeting people. She likes making them hurt, then she’s a pretty decent kid to sit and read to. Or, for you, to sit and watch as she makes faces and possibly yells a bit.”

“I could read to her if I wanted to, Laurie,” Cynthia replied, trying to get her hand out of Kjelle’s grasp but only succeeding at getting the child to grab her harder. “I really could! My daddy lets me read to Brady when we’re gonna go to bed, I pick all the cute books to read and he loves it.”

“Reading to a brother or sister sounds like it’s gonna be fun.” Her eyes watching Kjelle as the girl continued terrorizing Cynthia, Lucina gave a dreamy sigh and leaned back against the wall. “I can’t wait to get to do it. But…” She slowly turned to look at her friend instead, while she was still trying to pull away from how Kjelle was holding her. “Cynthia, do you have to share a room with Brady?”

Very confused by the question, Cynthia gave up the fight she was in, allowing for Kjelle to screech in victory as she pulled harder on the hand she held. “Why would I? I have my room and he has his room. I like being in his room when he’s there but I don’t have to sleep in there. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, that’s okay, I just wanted to know.” Hearing her friend mention having a brother enough times had made Lucina start thinking about one of the most conflicting parts about her own sibling she would be getting: the possibility of having to either share a room with them or having to move houses. “My house doesn’t have a room for the baby, and I don’t know if I wanna share mine with them.”

“Can’t Owain share with them?” Clearly not knowing how Lucina’s house was set up, Cynthia gave her best offer, one that was received with a loud laugh. “Oh, did I say a bad thing? I didn’t mean to…”

“Owain sleeps with his parents, ‘cause they all have to share a room. I don’t wanna have to maybe do that with my baby brother or sister, and I don’t think my parents will share with them.” Lucina twisted her mouth as she thought for a moment, before shrugging it off completely. “Oh well, I don’t want to think too much ‘bout that, it’s not a fun thing to be thinking when with friends.”

“You said Owain sleeps with his parents? Lu-ucky!” Cynthia looked over at where the two little boys were playing, watching as they moved from playing with the chair they’d found to Owain occasionally bopping Brady somewhere on the face and then laughing as Brady did the same back to him. “I wish I could sleep with mine! They always are like, um, ‘Cynthia, you’re a big girl, big girls sleep in their beds’ and it’s not fair!”

“Lucina, it’s clear she is going to do this for everything,” Laurent said, sounding older and wiser than he should have, “and I think we should ignore her. You think about your things and I will read my book, and she can do all the complaining she wants on her own.”

“I am not doing that thing.” Giving a “hmph” that involved tossing her pigtails so that they bounced for moments after she’d steadied her head, Cynthia turned back to looking at her friends and Kjelle. “I am just talking to my bestest friend Lucy and I guess meanie Laurie and then the cute baby here.”

“Do you want a prize for naming us all?” Laurent’s eyes were finally lifted from his page, him squinting in Cynthia’s direction (not with any malicious intent, he just couldn’t see her as well as he should have been able to). When she merely tossed her hair again, he rolled his eyes before going back to reading. “Didn’t think so. What a bore.”

“I don’t think I like the way you talk to my friend here, Laurent. Can you please stop?” Lucina knew that he wouldn’t actually stop and that asking was just to make Cynthia not feel so attacked, but she had to try anyway. When she was met with silence, she sighed, standing up and reaching a hand out to Kjelle to pull the little girl up to her feet as well. “Okay, we’re gonna go for a walk then. I wanna think about some stuff and I think Kjelle would like a walk so that’s what I’m gonna do.” At the first step she took to leave, Cynthia was trying to scramble to her feet, but she quickly stopped that. “This is gonna just be me and Kjelle. Not you, sorry.”

“I get it, I’ve gotta watch Brady anyway,” Cynthia said, some sadness in her voice but even then she didn’t seem too bothered by the rejection. “My daddy would be very upset if something happened to him while I was in charge! I’m a good big sister, I know I am!”

The sounds of Cynthia’s reassuring statements to herself quickly faded as Lucina, her hand being death-gripped by Kjelle, slowly walked away towards the last place she had seen her parents. On the way there, she stopped several times when she felt she was getting too far ahead of the little girl she was walking with, her arm completely stretched as far as it would go until Kjelle would take enough steps to catch right back up. One of those times, when they were in the middle of the room, Lucina looked around while she waited for the tension in her arm to lessen.

Watching over the room and everyone in it stood a statue that looked more serene and peaceful than anything else in the school could ever dream of looking. Lucina knew the person was her other aunt, someone she had never met and had asked about many times but hadn’t ever gotten an answer about aside from that she was always around, even if she couldn’t see her. This statue, which she’d grown up seeing over and over again, was the only time she got to see this other aunt, and so whenever she got the chance to stand in her gaze she tried to make sure to at least make eye contact with the golden figure and smile.

“What are you doing, kid? Making sure that your aunt Emmeryn knows you’re here and well?” Taking Lucina by surprise as he knew she was focused on the statue and nothing else, Chrom managed to walk up behind his daughter with her not noticing until he had spoken. She nodded, ready to explain why she was even up and around the statue but he shushed her, resting his hand on the top of her head. “No, you don’t need an excuse for wanting to see her, it’s fine. Emm loves you even if you don’t do this every time you’re here.”

“It’s not an excuse if I really was walking Kjelle around,” Lucina replied, “which I am doing. She’s just a bit slow and so I took a break here to let her take her time catching up while I looked at Auntie Emm.”

“Sounds reasonable to me.” Chrom lifted his hand, patting Lucina on the back a single time before retracting his arm completely. “Don’t do anything stupid in front of her, she’s seen enough of that in her time here. You’re a smart kid and…if she were here, she would love you so much. You’d impress her every moment of every day.”

“What do you mean by—oh.” Before she’d even managed to get the entirety of her question out he was already walking away, leaving her there in the presence of the statue with the exact same amount of answers she’d ever gotten about who the person there really was. “Guess there’s no reason to stay here anymore,” she said after giving the statue one last look, her arm beginning to get tugged in a different direction as Kjelle continued their walk without her. “We can go wherever you want, Kjelle. Nowhere is not allowed.”

Saying that to a little girl who has no sense of where is off-limits was rather meaningless, because she was going to lead them wherever she wanted anyway, but giving that verbal permission made Lucina feel like she had pushed for whatever the outcome was. They spent a good amount of time just going in circles there in that room, never stopping because now that Kjelle was in charge, she never needed time to catch up and Lucina was never more than two steps from being caught up. But when the teachers and staff started coming there into the room for their party actually starting, the girl got adventurous and led Lucina in the exact direction that all the adults had been coming from.

They pushed past teachers that Lucina recognized and others that she’d never seen before in her life, her apologizing for being underfoot when they were all trying to get to their celebration of school being over. Kjelle didn’t care that she was the one that was in the way, she would merely scream at anyone she ran into, whichever adult it was always looking down at her and then to Lucina, smiling at them both even after Lucina’s apology. “Where are we even going?” she asked when they reached a door that had been closed after the last teacher went through it, knowing that she wasn’t going to get an answer from her companion. In fact, all she got was Kjelle banging on the door, screeching as she did.

Clearly that meant it needed to be opened, even though Lucina had no idea what was waiting for them on the other side. When she did open it, the strong smell of all sorts of food came rushing at her, Kjelle’s screeches going from distressed to excited ones at the new development. The girls unlinked their hands because of how fast Kjelle was to bolt into the room, Lucina a bit surprised at how quickly she could move her feet when there was something she wanted involved. “I should have known it was food we were looking for, but I don’t think this is supposed to be for us. We should really go somewhere that isn’t here.”

Her hands already reaching for a plate of dinner rolls perched right at the edge of the table, Kjelle shook her head with defiance, prepared to stay in the room for as long as she wanted. Lucina’s face fell at the sight of the little girl, up on her tiptoes, reaching for one roll off the plate but proceeding to grab the entire plate instead, knocking it off the table and sending bread flying everywhere. Her eyes lit up and she dove to the floor, grabbing several of the rolls and shoving one into her mouth, not even minding that they’d been on the floor.

“Yeah, I think we’re gonna get out of here before you cause more trouble,” Lucina told the girl as she approached her, hand outstretched to take hold of her arm. Kjelle wasn’t exactly pleased with being grabbed and stopped from terrorizing the teachers’ buffet provided for their evening, but she didn’t resist being dragged out of the room, her hands each holding a roll and one still hanging from her mouth as they went back to where they’d come from.

All the teachers they passed on their way back now looked at them with various expressions of confusion, a couple asking themselves out loud where the child had managed to get rolls from, but it wasn’t until they were approaching where the other kids were sitting that someone actually asked Lucina what had happened. “Lucina, my sweet child, did you and your little friend go somewhere you weren’t supposed to?” her mother asked, having been trailing her daughter for a few steps. “And, if you did, did you really let her get into something that wasn’t for her?”

“I might have, to both,” she replied, not caring that she could get punished for what she had allowed to happen. “Sorry Mom, but she wanted in that room and—Mom why are you following me?”

“Er, because I wanted to talk to you about something, but if you’ve gone in that room, chances are it needs to be cleaned up before anyone else goes in.” Inhaling deeply and slowly exhaling her breath, Robin cast a unamused look down at Kjelle (who was still happily eating one of the rolls she had stolen) before telling Lucina, “At some point I will talk to you, but right now I have to take care of whatever has happened.”

“Sounds good to me, Mom.” Lucina chose to let the conversation fade from her memory as quickly as it had happened, even before her mother headed away, because she was already focused on what she wanted to do next. While talking to her mother about whatever her something ended up being was surely going to be a good time, there was someone else she wanted to talk to a bit more. But to even get to that conversation, she needed to get Kjelle off her hands for a few minutes, and the choices on who would do that for her were slim.

She ended up having that decision made for her, because when Kjelle saw Laurent still sitting in his spot with his nose buried in his book, she took off from beside Lucina, running to the boy and shoving one of her rolls in his face. “No thank you, but the offer is nice,” he said to her, looking from the page to see it was the youngest person present doing the polite gesture rather than someone older. “Oh, it’s only you, Kjelle. Why choose me to give a treat to over anyone else?” The girl, not quite getting his words, plopped down on the floor next to him and pointed with a roll-holding hand at the page he’d been reading. “I see. You want me to read to you in exchange for a roll.”

Knowing that Laurent was probably the best person to put in charge of Kjelle, Lucina didn’t bother with going up to him and asking if he was okay with the impromptu babysitting situation he’d found himself in. Rather than spend the time doing that, she walked over to where Owain and Brady were still playing, now under the amused and slightly-watchful eyes of Cynthia, and grabbed her cousin by the collar of his shirt, dragging him away a few paces until he brought himself to his feet and jerked himself away from her grasp. “Not now, Lucy, I’m playin’!” he yelled, waving his good arm in Brady’s direction. “Leave me alone!”

“No, I’ve gotta talk to you about something, but I don’t want my parents or yours to hear me,” she explained, hoping that he would trust in her enough to believe what she was saying. “Please, Owain, it’s kind of important.”

“It can wait, I’m playin’ with Brady.” Pulling his arm in so that he could cross it with the other over his chest, but failing to succeed at the action when his other arm wouldn’t bend properly enough to make it possible, he gave a loud groan that attracted the attention of several teachers. “Okay, fine, I can talk to you too.”

“It’ll be like a minute, I promise.” Crossing her fingers behind her back where Owain couldn’t see them, Lucina leaned in closer to him and whispered into his ear, “It’s about your baby cousin, kinda, and I don’t wanna be caught talking by anyone.”

Mentioning the baby had already made Owain’s face go from unhappy to excited in a heartbeat, and as Lucina was finishing her sentence he was already coming up with some way to fulfill her request. “Why didn’t you say so! We can talk somewhere super secret!”

“Thank you so much, Owain.” Her thanks might have been a tad bit premature, though, because his definition of “super secret” had them going back into the part of the school Lucina had seen all the teachers and staff coming from earlier, walking past the room with the food in it and heading straight for a much smaller place. He was leading the way, looking at the passing doors and walls as if he recognized them on his way to his destination, but he was completely clueless as he walked them in a circle a couple times before finally stopping in front of a door covered in drawings that looked like a young kid had drawn them. “Er, Owain, isn’t this your mom’s office?”

“It is,” he answered, trying to open the door but finding the handle locked in place, “but I can’t get it open. Can you help, Lucy?”

She looked at the door, noticing that the light on inside of the room was on and visible through the window, and shook her head. “Owain, I think someone’s in there. We have to find somewhere else to talk.”

“Mommy’s office is the best place, so we’re gonna talk in there!” Still trying on the handle, he had to be dragged away to finally give up the fight, something he was not happy about. “Okay, _fine_ , Lucy, we can talk while walkin’ if you want.”

Sighing, because that was far from what she wanted, Lucina figured that crushing her cousin’s dreams twice in such a short amount of time was a bad idea and so she went along with it. “We can do that, I suppose. I want to ask you about sharing your room. My parents, they might make me share with my brother or sister, and I don’t know if I wanna do that.”

“I don’t know what sharing with a kid is like. Gotta be not the same as sharing with parents.” Stopping in his tracks to think, Owain scrunched his nose as he added, “But sharing is not fun, no way, not even a little bit. There’s no room ever! What’s it like having your own bed, Lucy? ‘Cause I don’t know what that’s like.”

“It’s something I don’t think I want to give up, never ever,” she replied, knowing inside that her having to share a room with a sibling wouldn’t result in having to share a bed. “That’s all I wanted to ask—“

“It was best when it was just me and Mommy in the room. ‘Cept that she cried a lot.” Surprisingly serious for once, Owain had once again stopped walking, looking back in the direction of the office they had been trying to get into. “I like my mommy when she’s happy, but I like her when she’s sad too. I always like her.”

Lucina bit down on her lip to keep herself from interrupting the boy as he verbally worked through some things that he’d been holding inside, but as soon as she’d made that decision he was already moving on to something else entirely. Just because he was once again going through the hall, skipping and loudly singing to himself, didn’t mean that Lucina had gone past anything he’d said; she might not have known a whole lot about what had happened over that summer, but it was clear that Owain was still holding onto some parts of it. It was also clear that he didn’t have the perspective on sharing a room that she had been hoping for, even though what he had said was enough to make her know she definitely did not want to have to choose between moving to a new house or sharing a room.

When they got back to where the other kids were, not much had changed between any of them, although when Brady saw Owain he got up from where he was sitting with his sister to grab his friend into a hug, which made Owain laugh fairly loudly. “Jeez, does your cousin know how to be quiet?” Cynthia asked as Lucina came up beside her. “If he doesn’t, I bet Brady could teach him. Brady’s good at being quiet when he’s not crying.”

“I…don’t think I want to hear about anyone crying.” Lucina’s mind was still on that added comment Owain had made moments before, and even though Cynthia was referring to a tear-prone child when she mentioned crying, the older girl couldn’t help but think about the sight of her dear aunt being upset. “If you’re okay with it, I think I just wanna sit and watch everyone for a little bit. Got some big thoughts in my mind right now.”

“We can sit and watch, for sure!” Cheerful as always, Cynthia waited until her friend was sitting beside her to lean over and wrap one arm around her in a small hug. “Thanks for making tonight good and fun for me. You’re so cool and I love you!”

If Lucina would have given a response, it wouldn’t have been nearly as enthusiastic as Cynthia’s initial statement had been. She was already too busy looking at the group of teachers gathered there that night, all of them talking or dancing, each of them looking like they were having a good time. The thought of getting up then to find her mother and ask about what she’d wanted to say before was prominent in her mind, but she ignored it in favor of enjoying the moment while it lasted, knowing that things wouldn’t always be as simple as her being able to sit around with friends and have others watch who she was in charge of.

After the party was over and the cleanup had been completed, it had already gotten to be the late hours of the night and one by one, the kids gathered there were being taken home by their parents, all tired of the fun and celebrating. Eventually it was just Lucina sitting there, half-asleep and wishing she had chosen to go home with her aunt, uncle, and cousin instead of with her own parents, but they couldn’t be off doing whatever it was keeping them there so late forever. They would have to go home eventually, and she knew it was coming, it was all a matter of when that would be.

“Lucina, you still awake? Or am I going to have to carry you out of here tonight?” Finally coming into view after all the cleaning and restoring the school back to its normal state, Chrom looked at his daughter from across the room as she slowly brought herself to her feet and came towards him. “Good to see awake’s the right answer. I’m already afraid I’ll have to carry you into the house when we’re home, glad I’m not carrying you the entire time.”

“Carrying her into the house? You’ll be carrying _me_ in at this rate,” Robin said with a laugh, knocking her elbow into Chrom’s side. “We’re out much later than you’d agreed to, I’m completely exhausted and me being tired isn’t exactly best for our baby.”

“You simply being tired isn’t going to do too much to it, it’s when you’re stressed and tired that’s when the problems start.” She didn’t like having been corrected but she didn’t say anything about it, only rolling her eyes and heading towards the front doors to the school, which left Chrom standing there waiting for Lucina to join him. When she got to his side, having dragged her feet with every step due to how tired she was, he couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re adorable when you’re tired, Lucina. Didn’t mean to keep you out so long, but that’s what happens when people sneak off into places they shouldn’t be.”

“Yeah, someone was in Auntie Lissa’s office,” Lucina recalled, before realizing that she shouldn’t have known that because she shouldn’t have been anywhere near there. Her father raised an eyebrow as he looked down at her and she blinked a few times, her mind too muddled by being tired to come up with a good excuse. “So me and Owain took a walk and we went by there and the light was on, that’s all.”

“Funny, because I had heard everyone promise they hadn’t gone into any offices that weren’t their own…damn liars here on the staff.” Grumbling something under his breath that he wasn’t letting his daughter hear, Chrom walked them towards the door, joining Robin there as she looked at him with the expression of being dazed from having just yawned. “Nice to see you didn’t head out to the car on your own, Robin. Can you imagine, someone attempting to mug you in the parking lot? You would get hurt, or worse, our little Morgan would get hurt.”

“Just because it’s beginning to be easy to tell I’m pregnant from looking at me doesn’t mean I can’t put a would-be mugger in their place,” Robin said with an eyeroll, before her eyes shot wide open and she bent down to look Lucina right in the face. “Sweetie, remember earlier when I said I had something to say to you?” After the girl nodded, the vaguest of memories of the statement in her mind, she continued with, “It’s about the name your father used. I know we’ve said it on a few occasions in front of you, but I think it’s time you knew that we are completely serious about naming your sibling, brother or sister, Morgan. It was your father’s first choice for your name that I changed at the last second, and now it’s our chance to get to use it.”

Lucina nodded again, feeling herself falling asleep as she was being told things. “Mom, tell me this again in the morning, I’m too tired to remember,” she said, being brutally honest, “and I don’t wanna be expected _to_ remember this.”

“Almost midnight is no time to be telling our daughter such important information, Robin. She’s right, tell her in the morning, make it a nice surprise to wake up to that isn’t a surprise at all.” When Robin stood back up she shot a glare in Chrom’s direction, him awkwardly laughing as she did. “Okay, I get it, you’re tired and not enjoying me making my comments. Let’s just get home before we’re all attacked when we get out of this place.”

True to his word, Chrom had to carry Lucina into the house when they got home, as she had already fallen asleep on the short car ride back. And true to her own word, when she woke up the next morning she had no recollection of what she’d been told by her mother there by the school’s front door, leading to a breakfast-time conversation about baby names and if it was appropriate to refer to an unborn baby by their to-be name at all times before birth.

* * *

The conversation of moving versus making Lucina share her room with her baby sibling wasn’t brought up with the whole family for a long time. It was nearly a month into the spring semester when, after having had a rather rough day at school due to other kids being sick and disrupting class all the time with their coughs and sniffles, Lucina found herself not being picked up by someone planning on watching her for a few hours. Waiting for her outside her classroom that day was her father, a stone-cold expression on his face that barely softened when he saw his daughter nearly running out of the classroom.

“We have something important to discuss today, as a family,” he told her in explanation for why it was him picking her up instead of someone she had grown to expect standing there. “I hope this doesn’t come as too much of a surprise to you, Lucina.”

She shrugged, not caring so much about her father being the one to pick her up. In the end, it just meant that she wasn’t going to be stuck playing at Maribelle’s house, and she was more than okay with that change in her day’s plans. But after the absolutely silent ride home and the way her father seemed to be focused on composing his family discussion starter, she was beginning to wish that she had been able to go play with Brady instead of having to sit through what was to come. Whatever it was, it was going to be a serious matter that she probably wasn’t ready for.

The first clue that something unusual was happening was revealed the moment Lucina walked in the front door to the house, finding a single stuffed bear sitting a couple of feet in front of the doorway. “It’s so cute,” she said to herself as she bent down to pick it up, the feeling of its soft blue fur nice on her fingertips. “I wonder if this is a present for me. But it’s not my birthday, not yet…” She looked around to see if anyone she could ask about it was standing nearby, but she found that, aside from her father coming inside behind her, there wasn’t anyone around. “Daddy, look, someone got me a bear!”

“That’s nice, Lucina. Why don’t you go put your school things in your room where they belong and get ready for the family meeting we’re about to have?” He sounded distant, his mind clearly elsewhere, and as much as Lucina would have loved to have questioned him she simply accepted his request and walked through the house to her room, still not finding anyone as she entered. After her door was closed she heard another one in the house open, but she paid it no mind as it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary; she put her backpack down in its designated spot and then set the new bear on her bed, petting the top of its head before deciding it was probably for the best if she went out to the table for the family meeting before she was told to.

No one had been sitting there when she went into her room, so it came as a shock to see everyone in position when she left it. “I…I’m late?” she asked, bringing her hands to her mouth in the confusion of the moment. “B-b-but I didn’t take too long, did I?” Rather than wait around and see if they’d already started without her or if they were just sitting early, she ran to the table and took to her seat, looking at everyone and how they all had their eyes on one person and one person only, that being Robin as she anxiously played with her hands. On one hand, Lucina was thrilled to not have been late after all, but on the other, it was becoming more and more obvious that something was weighing heavily on her mother’s mind, and she was scared to know what that might have been.

“So, ahem, today we got to find out what our little Morgan’s going to be,” Chrom announced, watching as his wife looked less and less enthused with what was about to happen, “and I think we are all moderately fine with knowing that, come this summer, we’ll be adding a new boy to our family’s ranks—“ That was where cheering and clapping happened, the loudest sounds of approval coming from Lucina as she’d been wanting a brother for so long. Yet, even with that news having been dropped, she could still see that her mother was fidgeting and bothered by something, so when the cheering stopped and her father got back to talking she made sure to listen closely. “—but with that in mind, some things are going to have to change around here. There are two options on what we’re to do.”

“Three options,” Robin corrected, putting her hands down on the table. “Here I was hoping you’d get it right and you still managed to leave out one of the choices.”

“As much as it pains me to say it, moving is looking more and more like the only realistic choice we have here,” he continued, not bothered at all by his wife’s correction. “But this is my house, this is where I’ve raised my daughter for nearly seven years, I understandably don’t want to pack up and leave it behind. That being said, it’s equally realistic that someone,” he looked to Lissa, who seemed taken aback at the gesture, “finally takes the opportunity to branch out into the world.”

If there was anyone as shocked about the second choice as Lissa was, it was Robin, who motioned over to Lucina with her head. “And what about making Lucina share her room, hm? You jump straight to making your sister move out, rather than suggesting your favorite idea to keep us all under the same roof. I’m impressed by that, but you’ve still erased one of the viable options.”

“If we brought the idea of making her share a room up right now, I can guarantee that Lucina would turn it down.” He wasn’t entirely wrong, because she would most likely give that choice a negative answer, but at the same time, Lucina still wasn’t on-board with the idea of having to move. Giving the choice of making her aunt and her family move out was something she hadn’t expected to hear, but she’d gone so long knowing a life with that part of the family around that she was sure gaining a sibling wouldn’t quite cover the hole losing them would leave. “So I’ve dropped that from the choices. Is that acceptable, Robin?”

“I don’t think I appreciate that tone you’ve taken, but yes, I suppose it is. How funny that you’d be quicker to send your sister to the streets than to force your daughter to share something like a bedroom.” She didn’t really think it was funny, judging by the complete lack of laughter attached to her words. “I stand by my choice, our family stays together and we find a bigger home. There is just no way to fit seven people in this house.”

“We did do it when Maribelle lived with us,” Lissa said, still a bit shaken that the idea of her leaving was brought up, “but that was a bit different. Can’t ask a baby to call the couch home, you know. He wouldn’t like it very much.”

“My son will have a room of his own, be it in this house or in a new one,” Chrom stated, once again casting a look in his sister’s direction. “I am not going to force onto him what…er, what I’ve caused you to force onto your son.” His eyes drifted from Lissa over to Owain, who was paying absolutely no attention to anything happening around him. “Gods, it’s taken me this long to realize that I’m a complete hypocrite. Force you to raise your kid in a crowded room but attempt to change the world when it comes time to raise another one of mine.”

Robin, noticing that Chrom was beginning to question all of his actions, reached to him with a gentle hand. “Hey now, we all do stupid things when put in sticky situations. Of course, nothing’s quite as stupid as proposing your sister and her husband and child move out before even seriously considering making your daughter share her bedroom, but nobody’s perfect.”

“We have to move out of this place, don’t we?” he asked, his voice having grown considerably more quiet. “I can’t force them out, and forcing Lucina to share her room is no better than what I’ve forced upon Owain…” Chrom’s eyes were moving around wildly, focusing on someone for a moment before darting to someone else, his mind growing more jumbled by the second. “If we’re, or rather, if I’m going to make things right for them and create a perfect world for our Morgan, we have to move.”

Lucina sank down into her seat, not wanting to move but also not having wanted any of the other possible choices. Couldn’t there have been some other way for her to get what she wanted (a brother, which she was getting) without having to lose other things she liked (her own bedroom, or her house, or her cousin living with her)? Was this how growing up was going to work out?


	4. House Hunters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my apologies for this being SO EXTREMELY OFF-SCHEDULE, I've been sick lately and haven't had the mental energy to write but lemme tell ya, that's all better now because I am hyped for what's left in this story c:

“Now that we’ve finally started to listen to reason, I suppose we should get to planning our family’s big move.” Standing up from her chair and walking into the kitchen for a second, Robin came back to the table holding a stack of papers that she set down in front of everyone, spreading them out once she was reseated. “I’ve already done all of us a favor and looked some houses up, because I knew this was going to be the outcome, and—“

“What do you mean, you ‘knew’ it? Were you planning on throwing this at us all without, you know, actually talking through it with everyone?” Chrom grabbed one of the papers and looked at it, scowling at the picture of the house on it. “This isn’t how this should work, we should have come to the decision first and then started searching. Are you just going to sit to the side and dictate what we do? Feel you’ve already done your part?”

“I’m fairly certain your entire mantra this time around has been ‘don’t stress out, Robin, it’s not good for you’, and guess what? House hunting is pretty stressful.” Flipping through a couple of the papers she’d brought, she smirked when she turned and saw the look of disbelief on Chrom’s face. “Don’t worry, I’ll help with moving and everything, but finding the new place? That’s going to be your call.”

Also reaching for a paper and looking at it, Lissa had one thing to ask when she saw the description of the house it was talking about: “So, uh, are we going to make this a whole-family thing, or is it _just_ going to be Chrom picking out where we move to? Because I totally have some suggestions on what we need, and,” she read the paper a bit closer, flicking a specific part on it, “I don’t know if this ‘four bedroom’ thing’s going to work out.”

“I must have picked that one for some other quality it had, because you’re right, four bedrooms isn’t nearly enough for this family.” Robin outstretched her hand towards Lissa, who handed the paper over so that she could look at it. “Yes, that’s right, this house had rather large bedrooms, so I figured we could make four work even if it meant two kids shared a room.”

“If we’re just going to make kids share a room, we can add on to this place.” Grabbing another paper to look at it with his ever-growing scowl, Chrom waited for someone to accept his answer, and when no one did he was quick to slam his hand, and the paper within in, down on the table. “Gods damn it, all of you! Do you realize what kind of time and effort moving into a bigger house will take? Where are we going to get that time? That money?”

“That’s where you should put more faith in your wife and her planning skills. I’ve already arranged for some friends to help us out when the time comes, as for money, you’re the one always in control of the financials. Judging by what we could get for selling this house, I think you can manage to find a way to pay for a new house. Especially some of these…cheaper ones.” A third paper in her hand, Robin looked over the house in question she was suggestion, shaking her head at it. “Okay, maybe cheaper isn’t the option. Five bedrooms, we can do that. But one shower in the whole house?”

“You are lucky I love you because this is not something I ever wanted to do again in my life.” Pushing back from the table, there was a moment where no one was sure if Chrom was going to add anything else to his statement before he got up and walked from the table. Lucina looked to her mother, who was shaking her head in disappointment at his behavior, then looked across the table at her aunt, who was getting excited looking at some of the different houses they had fliers for.

She was torn on either following her father to see what he was going to do, or staying there to bear witness to the beginning of this house-selecting thing, but something happened to make her make up her mind. “I didn’t get a say when Chrom picked this place, and he’s so insistent that I don’t leave that I’ll probably never get to pick my _own_ place, so I’m so ready to get to have a say this time!” Lissa was scooping up papers and hugging them close to her body, turning in her seat as she did. “I just hope that where we decide on is good for everyone, not just Chrom.”

“You say that because we all know he’s going to want to get his way, and only his way.” As Lissa nodded, Robin brought a finger to her lips in thought, stroking it across them a couple of times before she came up with a solution to the problem. “Well, since I have no interest on stressing myself out looking at a million different houses that I like only for him to hate every single one, how about this? You make sure that he knows that your opinion is my opinion too, and if you really like a place, he better consider it.”

“But Robin, we all know he’s not going to like that.” Her turning ceased, and the papers were set back down on the table, but it did not mean that Lissa was moving on from what she was saying. “He’s so stubborn on getting what he wants, and nothing else is ever good enough if it’s not exactly what he asked for.”

“Then how ‘bout we both say we’re speakin’ for Robin?” Having not really shown interest in the conversation up to that point, Vaike didn’t go to grab a paper, but instead he put his hand on Lissa’s shoulder and pulled her in a bit closer to him. “Don’t ya think that’ll work? If we’re both speakin’ for his wife, there ain’t any way he can ignore us.”

Stifling a laugh, Robin corrected, “Actually, there’s plenty of ways he could ignore you, first and foremost being that your opinion means little to nothing to him. But it does mean something to someone that _does_ matter to him, so perhaps we could use that to our advantage here…”

Lucina, unsure what her mother was getting at, tugged at her arm to get her attention. “Mom, am I going to get to help pick the new house too? I want to make sure that I like it just like everyone else.”

“Hm, maybe you going along as well would be a good thing.” After smiling down at her daughter, even though Lucina still didn’t quite know what had amused her so much in the first place, Robin’s attention went back across the table to everyone else. “How about this, whenever you all decide to start this house hunt, it’s a full-family affair, minus myself of course, and you all try your hardest to make sure Chrom doesn’t force everything to be to his liking and his liking only. All of your voices, especially when you start speaking for me, will do the trick on getting him to back down, I’m sure of it.”

“Or you could just come with us,” Lissa reminded, shaking a finger at Robin, “but since you’re not coming with us I guess this’ll have to be what we do. Can’t be too hard to look at some houses and tell Chrom we like things he doesn’t, can it?”

In silent agreement with her aunt, Lucina went to grab her mother’s attention through another arm tug (to tell her that she liked what Lissa had been saying), but Robin jerked away before she even got the chance. Quickly getting to her feet, she apologized to the table with, “Sorry to cut this plotting session short, but I need to speak to Chrom about the other side of all this before it slips my mind and he goes into house-hunting with that immovable mindset he gets sometimes. And also…” Her voice trailed off as she dropped her hand to cover part of her side with her hand. “…you know what, let’s just leave it at that.”

“I bet she’s going to tell him something super important, and I bet I know why she didn’t say it in front of Lucina.” Winking across the table at her niece, Lissa couldn’t help but giggle, especially not when Lucina looked back at her with confusion in her eyes. “Oh, don’t worry about it! Your mom’ll tell you when she’s ready to tell you.”

“Why can’t she be ready right now?” Lucina asked, not knowing what was being talked about and really wanting to know. If there was one thing she really hated about being a young girl, it was the fact that everyone felt it was necessary to hide things from her and continually not explain anything to her. “I got to know the baby’s a brother and that we’re moving, can’t I know more stuff too?”

“I think she’s going to wait to tell you this one, just so it’s not a giant overload of everything happening at once.” Pausing, Lissa glanced down at Owain and how he was tracing over the pictures of houses with a shaky finger, before she looked back to Lucina and saw that the girl had managed to get more confused with a helping of being upset that secrets were being kept from her. “Trust me, if it goes as well as the _last_ time you were told about this thing did, I can so understand why she doesn’t want to tell you right now.”

Raising her eyebrows in suspicion, Lucina asked to clarify, “The last time? But she’s only had a baby once before, and that was me. I couldn’t do anything if I was the baby, Auntie Lissa.”

“Nobody said you were the baby in the situation, Lucina. Now that’s enough of me talking about it, gods know if you keep me going I’ll just tell you and you’ll go banging on your parents’ door to get to—oops, I almost just said it anyway!” Laughing at herself for her near-slip-up, Lissa had managed to frustrate Lucina more than anything, but rather than press the issue with her aunt, Lucina simply got up from her seat and traced her mother’s steps down to her bedroom, where she found the door firmly locked.

Of course her mother would have done that, she really did not want her daughter finding out whatever it was she was hiding. But she seemed to have forgotten that Lucina was great at listening to conversations through doors, and while she could hear the occasional word or two exchanged between her parents without pressing up against the door (thanks to her father’s frustration resulting in him yelling out), she needed the whole conversation. Once she was in place, the listening began, and it was a lot less interesting than she thought it was going to be. Why keep secrets when everything that was being talked about was going back to the house thing?

There just had to be more to their secrets than house talk, and Lucina wasn’t going to leave until she heard it. The news came out after a few minutes of her father loudly ranting about how much he did not want to move, about how uprooting and finding a new home was the very bottom of the list of things he wanted. “Chrom, seriously, acting like a child about this isn’t going to get us anywhere but unprepared and unready for when he’s born. Don’t you want somewhere for our little Morgan to comfortably live?” Robin’s voice was steady and calm, a sharp contrast to Chrom’s angry one.

“I want somewhere that I like for all of us to live. And this is the place. We picked this house because we loved it, and I don’t want to give it up. I can’t lose this house.” Although he was speaking in anger, he had stopped yelling so much, a softness coming to his voice that Lucina was sure was coming in because of something he could see. “Do you understand what I’m saying and why I’m saying it?”

“I’ve understood from the beginning. You thought this house was going to outlive you, just like you thought I was, and like you thought Lucina was going to be the one piece of you I’d get to keep.” There was a soft laugh that her mother gave at that, but Lucina didn’t find anything to be laughing about right there. Her father thought he was going to leave her behind? Why would he have done that? “Well, Chrom, things have changed and now if something strikes you down like it did Emmeryn, I’ll have two pieces of you to remember you by. And I, and those two pieces, are going to need somewhere bigger to live.”

“I get it, I get it, I’ve got to stop thinking about just myself on this one and consider everyone else too. It just sucks because you know how much having this house helped me cope with her being gone. Gave me a new place where I hadn’t seen her before. Moving’s going to be hard but it’s for you, and for Lucina, and for…for Morgan.” Whatever had happened in the last couple of words had taken him from sounding resentful to genuinely surprised, making Lucina really wish she could ask her parents about what she was hearing, because a lot had happened there in those words that she needed explanation for. At least she knew they were talking things out, although she didn’t know what her mother was hiding from her or what half the things they’d referenced were.

This moving thing was going to suck, there was no way around it, but at least it was to give them a better place for when her brother came around?

* * *

A couple of weekends later, armed with a few of those house flyers that had been deemed the most likely candidates for the house they’d end up picking, Chrom gathered his house-hunting group and prepared them for what was undoubtedly going to be an exciting day of looking at houses and complaining about each and every one. The very first issue of the day was encountered right then, as the only person he’d been told to take along for the journey that actually came when he called to gather was his daughter.

“Lucina, correct me if I’m wrong, but your aunt is supposed to come with us today, isn’t she?” he asked the girl, her nodding in response. “Interesting. Do you think she let it slip her mind that we were going to be looking for a new house? Think she got distracted by something else, perhaps that no-good hu—“ He was silenced by the front door to the house opening and both Lissa and Vaike walking inside, in the middle of conversation with each other and therefore not paying attention to how Chrom flinched back at their combined presence, cursing under his breath at his timing.

“Look, we found Auntie Lissa,” Lucina piped up, punching her dad in the leg. “Now you can stop being grumpy ‘cause she’s here.” He looked down at her with disdain in his eyes as she shrugged back at him. “I’m just telling you she’s here.”

“Yes, and anyone with eyes would be able to figure that one out,” he told her in a rough whisper, “but thank you for the announcement.” At that, he turned his focus over to his sister and his brother-in-law, the disdain only intensifying as he looked between them. “Ahem, ignoring the part where you were clearly late to our meeting time, aren’t you two missing someone?”

“Where did you think we went? Listen, we know that you don’t want to do this, so we figured that if we were both going to go with you, it would make your life loads easier if we didn’t drag Owain along with us.” Pleased with herself for thinking things out in advance, Lissa put fingers to her cheeks and beamed at her brother. “So we took him over to Maribelle’s, told her she’d get to be one of the first to see the house we decide on, and came right back without him because she’d be stupid to turn down that offer. That’s okay, right?”

Chrom’s face was growing redder by the second at what he’d heard, very much not okay with what his sister had offered to her friend in exchange for babysitting services, but before he got a chance to say anything, Lucina happily said, “Yeah! Miss Maribelle does so much for our family, I think that’s fair, and I think Daddy thinks so too!”

“Y-yes, I certainly do,” Chrom spat out after a few seconds of fighting with himself over actually saying it or not. “As long as she’s not a day-one guest, I don’t see a problem with—“

“And she’ll be helping us with moving, even though she said she’s not lifting any boxes because there’s better things she could help with.” Wanting to get that part of the deal out while her brother was still being accepting (although begrudgingly so), Lissa’s smile only got bigger when she saw him lose all control of the situation and sigh in defeat. “That wasn’t her idea, actually. Or mine either. We were set on it just being a trade of her watching Owain today so that she could be one of the first to see the house, but then that got brought up and she thought it was a great idea!”

Realizing that, if it hadn’t been either of the ladies to bring up the idea, then he knew exactly who to blame for it, Chrom took in a deep breath and looked at Vaike with a pained expression, slowly exhaling that held breath. “And let me guess, it was _you_ who decided it would be appropriate to suggest that to someone who doesn’t even belong in our home, wasn’t it?”

“It sure wasn’t Lissa, so who d’ya think it was? Ain’t like either of the kids that were there could’ve come up with such a great idea.” While he wasn’t as proud in the situation as Lissa was, it was clear just by looking at his smile that Vaike was enjoying getting under Chrom’s skin like he was. “’Sides, it ain’t like she’s gonna come in and wreck the place when she sees it. ‘Cause, y’know, she’s gonna be helpin’ us with movin’ everything in.”

“The problem I see here isn’t anything to do with her wrecking anything, although I must say, I’m surprised either of you would think she could handle this without wrecking something.” Inhaling once more, Chrom closed his eyes tightly and tried to push everything past him, exhaling through his nose as he reopened his eyes. “My problem is that _you’re_ the one telling her she can do something. On what planet do you—“

“Chrom! We’re not getting into this right now, please and thank you!” Lunging towards her brother to cut him off, Lissa wrapped her arms around him as tightly as she could until he gave a heavy sigh and turned his focus onto her. She let go of him, stepping back a few paces before giving him a pleading look. “There’s no reason for you to start picking a fight when you’re going to spending all day with us, don’t you think? Let’s just get to looking at houses and see if this anger goes away while doing that.”

“Oh, I can assure you that it won’t,” he replied, casting a glare at Vaike only to get that unwavering smug grin in return, “because it’s going to take a lot to move me past what I’m sitting on regarding him.” When he looked back to his sister, he saw that she was pouting at him, not liking his answer. “Okay, okay, I’ll try to play nice, for today and as long as it takes to get a new house.”

That was enough to get her to smile once more. “There’s an answer I can accept! Now let’s get going before we’ve wasted half our day standing here fighting!” She led the charge out the door, everyone following after at their own pace, and after piling into Chrom’s car and driving off into the unknown of the house hunt, Lucina took a moment to look at her aunt (who had chosen to sit in the back seat next to her) and see that she was deep in thought, her eyes fixated on the passing houses outside the window. “I just hope this doesn’t, like, take all day and then some,” she said to herself, barely loud enough for Lucina to have heard her.

“Do you think we’ll find a good house quick, Auntie Lissa?” the girl asked, leaning over to get closer to her aunt in case the answer was a quiet one. “I hope we do, I don’t like seeing Daddy so angry about things.”

“Sadly, I don’t think we’ll find anything fast at all. Your dad’s super stubborn about things and is going to make this a lot more difficult than it needs to be, and now that he’s getting heated about old things again, I doubt he’s going to play fair at all today.” She loudly sighed, hoping to catch a question shot at her from either of the men in the front seat, but when they remained silent she looked from the window towards Lucina. “I know that this all comes back to probably somehow being my fault, but…gods I hope this doesn’t go on too long. I’ve had to deal with them not getting along for years now…”

“Not getting along?” Lucina hadn’t ever considered that her dad and her uncle didn’t get along, she’d always seen them talking and interacting with each other in positive ways. Sure, there were moments like the one there in the living room that involved them getting angry with each other, but that happened with everyone! “Auntie Lissa, I don’t think I get what you mean there. They get along, don’t they?”

“I don’t want to get into this with you right now, Lucina, I’m sorry. Maybe someday we’ll talk about this and I’ll explain things better but right now…I just can’t.” Lissa turned back to the window, leaving her niece looking for answers that she knew she wasn’t going to get. “Let’s just hope everything goes well today, okay?”

Lucina nodded. “I can do that! Daddy, when are we going to start looking at cool new houses for us to move to?” Her attention was turned from her aunt to her father, as he gripped the steering wheel, his teeth grinding together as he resisted answering her. When she didn’t hear him say anything she slumped back into her seat. “Fine, I won’t ask anything. I’ll just be a good, silent girl until you need me.”

If he had needed her, he didn’t make it apparent, and so the ride was completely silent aside from Lissa’s occasional whispers to herself that only repeated her original statement: hopefully the day went by quickly and didn’t need to move to other days. When they pulled up to the first house they were going to look at, the rustic exterior made it seem like a good starting point, but moments after getting out of the car, opinions were already being made. “This neighborhood doesn’t feel like a good place to be, period,” Chrom said, grabbing the flyer for the particular house they were at from the middle console of the car before he stepped foot in the driveway, “but if this paper doesn’t like, apparently the house is somewhat decent on the inside. And not too bad of a price, either.”

Making her way to the front door, Lissa found it easy to push open without twisting the doorknob at all. Chalking that up to someone already having come to visit the place, she stepped inside and immediately regretted doing so, screaming much like she’d just come across something startling. “Bl-bl-blood!” she shrieked, running back from the house’s front door and to the car, shaking as she tried letting herself back into her seat. “T-there’s blood in the hall in there and that’s not okay!”

“Wouldn’t be surprised, looking around this neighborhood.” Still, trying to make sure his sister wasn’t being overdramatic for whatever reason, Chrom had to go open the front door for himself, seeing the exact same sight that had set her off. “Yeah, no, that’s definitely a crime scene of some sort in there. Should probably alert the police to that.”

None of them did that, but as they were driving away they did see a few police cars with lights on heading in the direction of the house, so chances were that they’d already been informed of the for-sale house that had been the scene of some violence. After casting the paper for that particular house down to the floor, Chrom went ahead and started towards the next one in the stack, taking them across town to one of the nicer neighborhoods. “This, uh, doesn’t exactly look like the kind ‘a place people like us should be livin’,” Vaike commented as they drove past mansion after mansion that looked worth more money than any of them had ever seen. “Don’t ya think that maybe, just maybe, we should be lookin’ at places more like the one we’ve already got?”

“Last time I checked, you have no part of owning my current house, so your opinion is invalid here. And we’re not going to be looking at one of these mansions, it’s a smaller home around here somewhere.” Looking from his paper to the street signs and house numbers, Chrom took them on several loops around the ritzy neighborhood before finally finding the turn he needed. How a normal-looking row of houses could share a fence-line with the richest part of town, he wasn’t sure, but the house the flyer was for did exactly that. “At least this place doesn’t have ‘murder house’ written all over it,” he told himself as he once again got out of the car, everyone else doing the same.

“It sure doesn’t, but it’s kind of sad to look at.” Covering her mouth with her hand as she looked at the house, Lissa shook her head. “Like, it’s really hard to like this house when there’s an actual mansion visible right behind it. And can you imagine getting over to the school every day? It’s on the opposite side of town! We work at a school meant for underprivileged kids and we’d be living literally right next to luxury! Can you imagine how upset about that Emm would be?”

“Don’t think ‘bout how upset she’d be, she ain’t exactly here to be makin’ that judgment. But just think, all these high-class and rich-y people livin’ ‘round here and us tryin’ to make buddy-buddy with ‘em? Ain’t happenin’.” Vaike also shook his head at the house, not wanting to move any closer to it than standing right next to the car as it was parked in the driveway. “None of us are classy enough to pull this place off.”

Chrom, already growing annoyed with this house-hunting process, gave a vocal third negative response to the place, although he seemed to have ignored the second one entirely. “I agree, Emmeryn would have wanted us to live within our means and her wishes, and she wanted what was best for everyone, privileged or not. If we lived here, she’d be watching us and wondering where we’d gone wrong. We’re not even going to try going inside this one.” And with that, it was back into the car to head back towards their side of down to do some more searching for what could become their perfect new home.

They had started their search that morning, and by mid-afternoon everyone was tired and hungry and didn’t feel like they’d accomplished anything at all. Once they’d started coming across houses that looked more familiar and more like homes they could find themselves moving into, it became a game of griping about what was missing rather than what was wrong. A few of the houses had big bedrooms but not a lot of space elsewhere, but with others it was too small of bedrooms and too much space for everything else. “We’re not living somewhere that doesn’t have enough room for us to get away from each other, while at the same time not having enough room for us to be alone. That’s just how it is.” Driving away from a house that would have been perfect if not for it only having one “gathering” area in the whole place, Chrom looked in the rearview mirror at Lissa and how she had her arms crossed over her chest, her head defiantly turned from facing her brother. “I’m sorry, but if I have to always share a living room with this guy you married, I will lose my mind.”

“So it comes to that, you not wantin’ to have the whole family together all the time anymore.” Sounding offended, but at the same time sounding like he wasn’t surprised by the statement at all, Vaike slammed his hand down on the armrest on Chrom’s seat and told him, “Y’know, ya could’ve said that some other way without comin’ out and insultin’ me and only me. You’re just pushin’ the whole issue here onto my back.”

“That might be because a good majority of the issue here _is_ on your back, but that’s probably not something you want to hear.” Pushing the hand away, Chrom was unfazed when Vaike went ahead and slammed it down again. “You’re being incredibly immature and I, honestly, didn’t expect you to make such a big deal about this. We’re not going to see eye-to-eye, we never really did and after everything you’ve done we’re never going to again, and if I don’t want to live somewhere where I am forced to interact with you I’m not going to.”

“Then why don’t ya stop this car and let us find our own place to live, ‘cause if we’re that much of a burden t’ya, why bother tryin’ to include us?”

“Because I am not putting my sister in the situation of living with someone who might just walk out on her again!” Pressing his foot down hard on the brakes while they were in the middle of the street, but thankfully with no one behind them, Chrom brought them from cruising just over the speed limit to stopped in a matter of seconds, the squealing of their tires as they rapidly slowed enough to make Lucina flinch and Lissa scream, her covering her ears at the sound. “I will admit and accept that I forced you two to be together, but if you think you’re going to get the chance to walk out again you’re stupider than I ever would have considered.”

The silence in the car, amplified due to the complete lack of traffic around them, was broken by the sound of the front passenger side door opening, then being shut with a ton of force. Opening the door again, Vaike started to speak as he closed it once more, harder than the first time. “Ya stopped the car just t’yell once you did it. What’s even the point of it, then? Just tryin’ to make me feel bad ‘bout anythin’ I’ve ever done?”

“I would hope that you feel bad about everything you’ve ever done whenever you bother looking at your wife and son, but that’s none of my business, I suppose.” Chrom was once again gripping his wheel tightly as he started driving once more, but just because his main focus was on the road did not mean he was going to stop his verbal attack. “I’m not going to burden my sister with having to worry if you’re going to be around when she wakes up every morning, because I’m going to make sure the only ways in and out of _my_ house will be easy to keep you from getting through.”

“So me existin’ is basically what’s makin’ all this so difficult for ya. I get’cha, Chrom, no worries. Just lemme get on outta your hair and let ya get on with your business. And since ya'd be devastated if your sister’s heart got broken again—which, far as I know, it ain’t been broken even once before—why don’t ya just let her come with me?” Going to open the door again, despite them now being in motion, Vaike was stopped by Chrom continuing to lock the door on him every time he tried opening it. “Okay now that just ain’t fair, how’re ya gonna make a scene just t’keep me stuck here with ya?”

His hand still on the lock and still making sure that all attempts to open the door were thwarted, Chrom had an answer to the question that was clearly one he’d been holding in for some time: “I’m keeping you ‘stuck’ here with me because I care more about Lissa than you ever could! I’m more than aware that letting you leave my sight will only lead to her being alone all over again, and I’m not letting you put her through that. Shouldn’t have happened the first time and it’s not happening a second.”

“It never happened the first time either, dunno what you’re goin’ on about here.” Either he was unaware of what he’d done, or he didn’t see it the same way Chrom was seeing it, but something about Vaike’s response was enough to get the driver to do another rapid slowdown of the car, albeit not as dramatic as the first one. “Okay, now we’re gettin' somewhere. Ya gonna let me go this time?”

“I’d rather wreck this car than let you get out when you’re just going to bolt.” Resuming driving like nothing had ever happened, Chrom checked his mirror to see Lucina beginning to legitimately cower where she sat and Lissa sitting next to her, at a complete loss for words but her hands frozen over her mouth at what she was hearing. “If I let you do it, I’d be a disgrace of a brother. My sister loves you, she always has and she always will, and you’re too damn dumb to get that through your head. What makes you think that I’m going to ask for you to leave her behind?”

“No one said anythin’ ‘bout me ever thinkin’ to leave Lissa, you’re just makin’ things up to try and make your hatred of me, or whatever this is, sound like it means somethin’.” Vaike was giving up on getting out, moving his hand back to the seat behind his as he tried to reach for Lissa’s leg, but she saw him coming and moved both her legs out of his reach.

Not sure how to react to what she was witnessing, Lucina closed her eyes and leaned forward, bringing her knees up so that she could rest her head on them. “I don’t like this,” she whispered to herself. “I don’t like anyone fighting like this, I just wanna go home…”

“You and me both,” Lissa said in agreement, catching Lucina by surprise as she’d thought she’d made herself impossible to hear. “I’ve known this was going to happen for years and years now and I never thought trying to find a new house would bring them to this point.”

“Auntie Lissa, why did you know this would happen?” Lifting her head to look in her aunt’s direction, all she got in response was a half-hearted shrug. “Oh okay, I get it, it’s not something I need to—“

“And _another thing_ , you ignorant fool, you’ve done nothing but break everything around you since you first got involved with my sister!” The argument in the front seat hadn’t cooled down in the slightest, Chrom’s newest point cutting his daughter off in her conversation. He was driving them back towards their house, turning down familiar roads that everyone recognized, and he was taking every opportunity he could to make turns a bit too tightly, or to slam on his brakes a lot harder than necessary. “I can’t even begin to describe to you how much I hate that you’ve even had the chance to do a single thing you’ve done to my family!”

“Like breakin’ your table, which was your fault t’begin with, or not feelin’ like I’m good enough and leavin’ because of that, which only happened ‘cause y’make me feel like there ain’t a damn thing I’m able to do t’please you!” Another silence fell across everyone in the car, the impact of Vaike’s words enough to stun them from talking, until he added, “Why even bother keepin’ me ‘round at this rate, huh?”

Chrom, once again inhaling deeply with his rage, had a quick answer to give. “I keep you around because of how much you matter to my sister, even though I told her from the very beginning that you weren’t worth anything. But I’ve put up with you for years in a lot closer of a capacity than I had ever wanted, all for her. I’ve thrown money at you and everything you need, for her. I tolerated you breaking every rule I’d ever set for the both of you because it was making her happy. I’ve given you _two_ vehicles, so that you can have some form of independence living your life with her. The least I could ask for is to not have to share every piece of my house with you, isn’t it?”

“C-can we please stop having this conversation?” Lissa’s voice was choppy as she spoke, interrupting her husband before he could say anything else to further bother Chrom. “There are better places to do this, places that aren’t in front of me or Lucina…”

No one else said a thing for the rest of the ride home, and when that was the end of house-hunting for the day it didn’t come as much of a surprise to Lucina. The loud yelling that filled the air later that night after she’d been sent to bed wasn’t very surprising either, and while she couldn’t say she was entirely sure why her father was being so nasty towards her uncle, she only had to hope that everything between them would be okay.

* * *

As no suitable house had been found that day, the following weekend had time dedicated for the exact same search, and that too proved to be fruitless. For weeks they would gather when they had the chance to spend the better part of a day looking for somewhere new to live, and every time they came back without having found a single place that felt right. Some of the houses seemed to be too nice, others too small and not what they were looking for, and by the time they’d spent a handful of days on this task, the worry that they weren’t going to find anywhere was beginning to settle in.

Of course, once they were given a reason to try harder, there was no way they were going to accept defeat on this matter. “I’ve got an important announcement for you all,” Robin told them one of those mornings before they left, her arms wrapped around her small yet noticeable stomach. “I’ve been in contact with some people, and I think we’ll have this house sold here within the next week, two weeks tops.”

If there hadn’t already been a feeling of dread regarding the impending move, one had definitely appeared after that news. “So you’re saying we need to find somewhere to move into today, so we can get moved next week while on break, is that right?” Chrom asked to clarify, Robin nodding at him after he finished. “Great. Just great. As if this wasn’t hard enough, now we’re working with a much closer deadline.”

“I bet you’ll manage to figure something out.” With a smile, she looked at everyone that was standing there, all of whom were looking back at her with varying degrees of concern in their eyes. “Why, I’m sure each and every one of you would rather be spending today getting to do something else aside from this, so why don’t you try and get to do whatever it is instead of looking for a house!” Had it been more like the first weekend of looking and not like the current one, perhaps the idea of rushing to get through their hunting to do literally anything else would have been more appealing. But this day they had two children along for the ride, and all three adults had differing things they would rather have been doing; all in all it was going to end up being a huge mess if they weren’t careful, potentially coming to blows.

As they got into the car, Lucina caught herself looking back at the house, wishing that she could just stay home with her mother instead of going along with her father. “Psst, Lucy, what’re you doin’?” Owain loudly asked, drawing attention to her and her longing glances. “We’re leaving, not staying!”

“I know, but…” Sighing, she shook her head and looked at her cousin, him grinning at her as he took his seat and dramatically motioned to where she would be sitting next to him, his mother on his other side. Seeing Lissa there in the back seat once again made Lucina feel a bit better about having to go, but it still didn’t change the fact that she wished she could just stay home, especially not after the car started on its new adventure for the day.

“But what, you’re tired of having to do this? I think we all are, but now we’ve really got to get into gear and find where we’re going to be moving!” Clasping her hands together, Lissa tried to muster up as much excitement about what they were doing as she could, but it fell flat and she dropped her hands back into her lap. “Okay, really all I want is for this to get over super quick so I can go to Maribelle’s and talk to her about some really important stuff, but I’m going to at least try to be helpful today.” Even with that mindset, she still didn’t stop herself from leaning up close to the front seats after they’d started driving, one question spilling from her mouth. “Say, Chrom, did you hear about—“

“If the next word is ‘Ricken’ then yes, yes I did hear about what happened with him. Hard not to hear about it when you sat in your office discussing it with Maribelle all week.” His dismissive tone was enough to get her to lean back where she belonged, casting a wide-eyed look in the direction of her niece, Lucina shrugging back in return. “Trust me, we’re not doing this for very long today, so that you can spend your day dealing with his woman troubles and I can spend my day on work-related things and Vaike can…” He looked over at his passenger, who was narrowing his eyes as he waited for whatever insult was about to follow. (Even though it had been weeks since their big argument, it was obvious to everyone, including Lucina, that another one was brewing underneath the surface.) “He can do whatever it is he’s planning on doing today, which if Lissa’s going to be with Maribelle I’m assuming that means being anywhere but there with her.”

“He’ll probably come with me, the more he hears about what that wretched woman does I bet we can get him wanting to take action against her so none of the rest of us do it!” Ignoring her brother telling her in very loud terms not to start a fight, Lissa laughed and playfully smacked Vaike’s arm with as much of her hand as she could before resting her head back against her headrest, giving a long sigh as she did. “No, I don’t honestly know what he’s going to do today, but there better not be any fighting, I agree.”

“Shouldn’t it be that the Vaike gets t’decide what he’s gonna do?” He gave a pause in which he thought an answer would be given, but when no one said anything, aside from Owain giving a small cheer at the sound of his father’s voice, he rolled his eyes before looking over to Chrom. “Okay, well in that case, I’ll do whatever feels right after we’re done doin’ things today. Keepin’ it a surprise ‘til the end.”

“Whatever floats your boat, I was assuming you’d be playing things that way regardless of what anyone else said, so, uh, good on you for affirming that.” They were already pulling up into the driveway of a house, still within the neighborhood they lived in but in a different section of it. All of the surrounding houses seemed to have two front entrances, something that did not seem to be true of this one at first glance, but once everyone was out of the car and exploring the property, the second entrance was quickly discovered.

And it was found by two wayward children who were looking in the exact opposite areas as the parents. “Lucy, why’s there a door down the steps?” Owain asked, peering through a metal fence while he waved for his cousin to come look at what he was seeing. Once she was beside him, he stuck his hand through a hole in the fence, trying to reach for the door that was obviously too far for him to reach. “It’s so far…”

“That’s weird, why is there a door down the stairs?” Taking a second to examine everything she could about the strange door, including how it had its own light and even a house number, Lucina grabbed Owain by the collar and pulled him back from the fence, dragging him around the house to where her dad and his parents were all gathered, discussing the oddities of the house just from its outside. “Daddy, we found another door,” she interrupted, her cousin further interrupting by trying to correct that _he’d_ been the one to find it.

“We’d figured there’d have been one, but where is it?” Chrom, looking to the prominent front door that stood above all of them on a raised porch. “That’s part of the, ahem, charm of this house, that it’s got two entrances and, in theory, two different living areas.” He tried to ignore the almost deadly glare he received from Vaike for mentioning the living area thing, but failed to fully escape it. “Yes, I know, probably hits a nerve hearing me talk about that but this house is something else. And if those kids found the second door, well, why don’t we give this place a real shot?”

“This ain’t gonna be like that house from last weekend with the huge downstairs area ya were threatenin’ to lock us down in, is it?” Vaike’s question was serious, but when Chrom only awkwardly laughed in response, he wasn’t buying it. “Yeah, sorry, we ain’t doin’ this if you’re just gonna use your ‘ownership’ of the place t’lock us out of your life.”

“I don’t think that’s what he’s thinking of doing, Vaike, so please just give this place a chance!” Kicking the ground with her toes, Lissa had her eyes focused down at the cement of the driveway, so that she couldn’t tell if either of the men were looking at her. “I think it’s really nice that Chrom’s thinking about giving us our own living space even if it’s still part of the same house.”

“At least someone can appreciate my efforts. Come on now, let’s see what this place looks like inside.” Waving for everyone to follow him, Chrom headed up the stairs to the front porch, finding the door at the top unlocked like so many other of the for-sale homes had been. He opened the door and proceeded to hold it as everyone else filed into the house, him entering right after Lucina did. “Maybe we’ll finally have found our place, huh Lucina?” he asked his daughter, bending down so that he could whisper into her ear. “Don’t you think your mother would appreciate knowing we’re finally done with this?”

“I think she would, but…” Lucina’s voice trailed off as she looked around at the room they’d entered into. It was bare and empty, the home’s previous owners having already moved out completely, but there was something to it that felt familiar to her. Maybe it was the way the kitchen split off from the room, or maybe it was the placement of the hall to the bedrooms, but it felt more like their current house than anything else had been able to. “Daddy, can we look around more before I answer?”

“Of course, my princess.” Seeing that Lissa and Vaike had already gone off to start looking at parts of the house that interested them, and Owain had found himself a nice corner to flop down in and stare at the ceiling, Chrom placed a hand on his daughter’s shoulder and used it to push her towards the hall a bit. “Since everyone else went the other way, why don’t we check out the bedrooms first?”

That had been the biggest thing that Lucina had wanted to see, and she was sure that her father had known that. A lot of the other houses they’d seriously looked at were rejected because of the size of the bedrooms; most of them didn’t have a single bedroom that Lucina had liked enough to want to call it hers. “If we can find a room for me, I think I’ll like this house, and if I like this house then Mom will too!”

“Then let’s get to looking, there’s no point in continuing being here if you’re not going to be happy with the place.” He wasn’t pushing her nearly as much as she was walking herself, her eager to see what was in store for them in this place. After first finding what was undeniably the master bedroom (big enough to automatically impress Chrom, which made Lucina a bit scared that she would disappoint him by not liking the other bedrooms), and then finding the hall bathroom, it was a choice between two doors that both looked to go to bedrooms. “I think, if this were to be the house we move to, we’d want the room closer to mine and your mother’s to be for your brother,” he said, motioning towards one of the doors, and Lucina nodded at what he said. “So that would mean that the other room would potentially be yours. Shall we take a peek?”

She was a step ahead of him, opening the door and going slack-jawed at the sight that waited on the other side. It wasn’t impressive, with its bare walls and lack of all furniture, but it was bigger than the bedroom she already had. It had its own large closet, and a big window looking out on the house next door, and enough room to hold her bed and her dresser and all her toys, and even then it would still have some extra space! “Daddy, if my room at home was this size, I think I’d so share it with my brother,” she excitedly said, cupping her cheeks as she ran into the room and spun around, her shoe sliding along the carpet with ease. “But I don’t have a room this big and I _want_ it.”

With a laugh, Chrom replied, “That’s good to hear, Lucina. I’ll keep that in mind. You stay in here and keep looking at it, I’m going to make sure the other rooms on this story are suitable.” He didn’t close the door on her when he left, leaving her alone in the room to spend time looking at the large closet and the view outside the window—but leaving the door open also meant that she was able to hear the sounds of footsteps descending and quickly ascending a staircase somewhere in the house.

“Oh my gods, Chrom! Chrom! Where are you?” Her voice sounding frantic as she called for her brother, Lissa could be heard running through the empty house, until she came into the empty bedroom that Lucina was standing in. “Have you seen your father anywhere, Lucina? He needs to come downstairs and see how amazing it is!” The girl shrugged, because the only thing she knew was that he had gone to look at other rooms, and she was surprised when her aunt came and grabbed her, picking her up in a big hug. “Lucina, it’s so big! So much space! So much room for all of us!”

“That’s how upstairs is too, Auntie Lissa,” she managed to say, although her face was being squeezed into her aunt’s shoulder as she was being hugged. “It’s lots of room for everyone.”

Setting Lucina back onto the floor, Lissa shook her head at her niece’s words. “No, you don’t understand, it’s more space than I think your dad was expecting to be giving us! He’s got to see it for himself, he’ll be so thrilled to give us all the living space we could ever need!” She was already ready to leave the room, back on her search for Chrom, but when he came right to the doorway as she was leaving she didn’t have to go very far at all. “Chrom! You’ve gotta see downstairs, it’s amazing!”

“If it’s anything like the other bedrooms up here, I can only imagine how it is. But—okay I guess we’re heading downstairs.” Lucina wasn’t sure what her father was trying to do, as he had gotten as far as pushing the door to the room she was in open a bit more before Lissa took hold of his arm and started dragging him back out to the living room on the upper floor. She followed them, not wanting to be upstairs by herself, and once they were out in the living room once more she noticed that a door that had been closed upon their arrival was now wide open, Lissa and Chrom heading right for it.

“You’re havin’ him come down right now?” she heard her uncle asking from somewhere on the staircase, and when he was told that that was the plan, he came bounding up the rest of the stairs, giving a dramatic gesture with his arms towards the waiting stairs. “Promise ya this, Chrom. If you’re impressed by what’s down there and ya pick this house, I ain’t ever gonna have a problem with ya pickin’ out my problems again, ever. This place is, by far, the nicest house I’ve ever been in, and that’s sayin’ a lot.”

“To be fair, you’ve also lived in a school and been homeless, so I’m not exactly sure how—o _kay_ Lissa we’re going down the stairs right now, why don’t you just go ahead and try killing me on these things!” His sentence had been disrupted by being tugged down the first couple of stairs, nearly sending him crashing into the person pulling him, but he straightened himself out and started walking for himself. Now curious about what was so great that had everyone so impressed, Lucina ducked past her uncle and continued following her father down the stairs, listening to the sounds of all their footsteps as they descended.

Waiting for them at the bottom was a living room very similar to the one they had just left, although this one did not have the luxury of the giant windows shining into it, nor did it have the attached kitchen. “It looks like the only thing we have to share, if we get this place, is the kitchen, which is okay, I think!” Lissa explained, still dragging Chrom as if she was on a mission to show him something specific. “I’d so totally share a kitchen if it means getting all this space down here!”

“It is fairly roomy, I’ll admit to that,” Chrom said, looking around at the living area as he was directed towards the hallway that had one less door than the similar hallway upstairs. “And only two bedrooms down here, exactly what you need. I can understand why you like this so much.” At those words, his arm was finally let go of, and while he rubbed at where his sister had been grabbing him he looked to her, hoping she had some reasoning for why they’d stopped in front of one of the bedroom doors.

“From the moment we headed down here, Owain’s been, like, hiding in there. I think he really likes the room.” Her hands beginning to fidget, Lissa motioned towards the door with one shoulder. “If anything’s going to convince you that this is the house for us, maybe seeing my little boy, who’s only ever known sharing a room with his parents, be so excited about his own bedroom will do the trick.” He didn’t move, causing her to motion to the door again. “What are you waiting for, go on and see!”

“Lissa, I…I believe you. Everything about this place seems too good to be true, too perfect to have fallen into our laps like this, and yet we’re here and it’s available to us. He can get his own bedroom, Lucina and Morgan will have their own upstairs, each family’ll have its own living space but we’ll still be able to come together for meals…” He swallowed down hard, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his phone. “Can’t believe it took this long just for us to hit the jackpot on our first try today. I’ll call Robin and let her know she’s got to come look at this place, but I think we might have our new home.”

There wasn’t any time for celebrating, as there were still things to do before they could officially say the house was really the one for them. A full walkthrough of the building had to be done, and the yards surrounding it needed to be inspected. There was a bit of concern about that second front door down on the bottom floor, with the possibility of people sneaking out or leaving through it, but that concern was pushed aside in favor of how much everyone really liked everything else about the house. Even later that day, when Chrom and Lucina came back to show off the place to Robin, she couldn’t find a single major thing to nitpick about the house (minus the stairs to get inside, but she admitted that in time that wouldn’t bother her as much).

“Looks like me telling you that our current house is going to be sold was enough to get you to take action,” she said with a laugh as she was led around the downstairs part of the new place, “because I doubt you’d have found this place if you hadn’t had that new deadline looming over your head.”

“No, we would have found it eventually. Now all we need to do is actually purchase this place and get everything moved over here.” The three of them were standing in the bottom floor’s living room, dark and bare walls surrounding them on all sides, and Chrom was tapping a finger to his lips as he looked around. “Don’t know what we’re going to do about furnishing this part of the house, but we’ll get to that when we do. I’m sure Lissa won’t mind too much if we put off—“

“Chrom, we’ll have to talk to her and Vaike to see if they’d be fine with that before we decided it for them. Maybe they’d be happy with some hand-me-down furniture, possibly even what we already have, and that way we can get all new things!” Robin’s eyes lit up at the prospect of getting to furnish her new home with everything being new, but she quickly let that excitement subside. “No, we’re not going to push our old stuff onto them, this is not the time to keep holding them down like that. They’ll get new things, we’ll keep what we have, and this time next month I’m sure this place will feel like two separate yet connected homes for all of us!”

The talk of furniture made Lucina worried about how her bed and all her other belongings were going to get moved from their current house over to the new one, but she was sure her parents already had a plan in mind for that. How else would they be able to move in, how long had her mom said they had, a week or two? As they all started heading back upstairs before making their final decision on the place, she stopped dead in her tracks, the reality that, very soon, this would be the house she knew instead of the other one hitting her a lot harder than she’d expected it would. She managed to keep herself together for the rest of the time they were there, but the moment she was back at her house in her bedroom, she was laying on her bed crying her eyes out.

That new place was nice, and her new room was going to be great, but how was she going to be able to say goodbye to the one she already had?


	5. Moving Days

According to the conversations Lucina overheard happening between the adults, closing on the new house didn't actually take very long, a movement spurred by the fact that there was very little time for them to get everything moved from the old one into its empty rooms. The people who were buying their current house weren't going to be ready to move into it right away, which gave them a bit of extra time to get things settled and taken care of, but a few extra days weren't going to do much in the end. Not when the entirety of the move had to happen over spring break, when most of the people enlisted to help, not to mention all four adults of the house, would be completely available.

The plan was to have everything packed up and moved over to the new place in three days’ time. Ever since they’d found their new home there had been some light packing here and there, but no one had fully committed to the move until the strict, Robin-enforced “we should be out of here by March thirtieth” deadline was fast approaching. Even though she was the one preaching the time limit, she was adamant in her stance on keeping a distance from the heavy, stressful work, putting it squarely on the shoulders of the rest of the family.

A family that definitely included Lucina, even though she would rather have been playing with all the kids that had been brought by their parents who had come to help pack and move. “But Mom, Owain doesn't have to help, why do I have to?” she whined, sitting on the couch facing the window behind it to look out on the front yard and the kids that were gathered on it, her cousin being one of them. “If Cynthia and Laurent are gonna be here, I'm playing with them and not helping.”

“We discussed it as a family and determined Owain would be too much of a liability to have help, so when we were finding someone to watch all the kids that'll be here, we made it very clear that he was going to be their responsibility. Thank everything that Maribelle volunteered for the job, although I'm not sure I trust her watching more than her son and Owain at once…” Shaking her head, and ignoring all further pleading that Lucina did, Robin pointed a stern finger towards the girl’s bedroom. “Now get packing your room, little miss. If you get enough done, maybe we'll consider letting you play with any of your friends that might still be here then.”

Lucina rolled her eyes, getting off the couch and looking around at all the adults that had already shown up for the day. Because of which kids she’d seen outside, she wasn't surprised at all to see some of them, such as Cynthia’s dad, Laurent’s mother, and both of Kjelle’s parents. Just thinking about how that little girl was getting to play with her friends while she wasn't gave enough of a spark to Lucina’s motivation to get her running past everyone who was there, heading to her room to start packing.

She was greeted there by a woman with long red hair that she vaguely recognized, trying to pull away a girl with blonde pigtails from the doorway. “This is not your room to be rummaging through, if we were here for fun reasons I would consider asking if you were allowed in but…” The woman fell silent at Lucina's appearance, but the little girl didn't seem to mind that the person the room belonged to had shown up.

“Lucy, Lucy please tell my momma I can come in!” the girl pleaded, not letting go of the doorframe she was clinging to. “You're so nice and fun! You always let me come in!”

Looking to the girl’s mother, then to the girl herself, Lucina scrunched her nose in thought, ultimately shaking her head in denial. “Sorry, Severa, only reason I let you in is ‘cause your dad asks me to play nice with you so you don't bully Owain all the time. I've gotta pack my room, I can't have someone distracting me.” Crestfallen, Severa’s grasp of the doorframe loosened, allowing her mother to finally pull her away.

“You'll listen to Lucina but not your own mother. What kind of failed parent am I?” the red-haired woman asked herself, before giving a nod of thanks to Lucina. “Anyway, apologies for bothering you in this time, perhaps later you could spend a moment with my Severa so she feels less left out?”

“Mom said if I pack enough I could maybe play with friends, so if she's still here I'll play,” Lucina replied, entering her room and closing the door on the two people outside it. She could hear Severa starting to whine and demand to be let in, but as her loud hollering seemed to disappear, Lucina assumed that her mother was dragging her outside with all the other kids. The worst thing that could happen with her out there would be a kiddy argument; if she had been allowed in the bedroom, then no packing would have occurred and that would have been much, much worse in Lucina’s mind.

She looked around her bedroom, a stack of boxes piled against one wall for her to use as she needed them. “What do I start with?” she asked herself, glancing to her toys and then to her dresser, ultimately going back to the toys as her final decision. “I guess I need clothes still, but I don’t need toys. So in the box they go!” It felt like she was making the right choice, especially when her father came in to check on her after what felt like forever (but was actually an hour, tops) and saw her closing one completely-filled box of her toys.

“Say, Lucina, you’re taking this moving thing more seriously than certain others in this house are,” he grumbled, stepping away for a moment to grab a pen and some tape to seal the deal on the box she’d finished off. “Your aunt could use your motivation to get things done. She’s been trying to go through her dresser all day and hasn’t made any headway on anything. You’ve already got one box done, go help her do the same and come back to get another one of your things.” The girl, not wanting to anger her father by telling him she didn’t want to spend time helping someone else when all she wanted to go was go outside and play, meekly nodded, leaving her room as he was taping her box closed.

When she got to her aunt’s room, she found the woman sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaning up against her bed as she rifled through the contents of one of her drawers. “Oh, hello Lucina, let me guess, your dad sent you in here to motivate me or whatever.” With a sad smile, Lissa waved to an empty portion of the floor. “You can sit there, but no promises you being in here will make me move any faster.”

“He said one box and then I have to go back to my room to do another box of my own, so…I think I’m okay with you not going fast.” Taking a seat in the spot she’d been shown, Lucina reached into the drawer and pulled out what looked to be an envelope of pictures, something she set down at her aunt’s request. “So, um, what are you looking at that’s making you go so slow and stuff?”

Setting down the pictures she was going through and instead reaching for the ones Lucina had grabbed, Lissa replied, “I’m looking through stuff from when I was in school. Just kind of remembering what it was like back then when we first moved into this house and I was still young and didn’t have so much super-adult stuff to be worrying about.” She flipped through a few of the pictures in the envelope, pulling one out and passing it to Lucina, surprising the young girl as she was looking at an image of a much-younger version of her aunt standing in what she assumed was a bare version of the room they were currently sitting in. “Look at that, that’s me the day Chrom picked this house out. He told me this would be it for him moving, and that I would have to move out eventually, but I guess he never saw anything that happened actually happening.”

“One time I heard Mom saying something about him thinking he was gonna die, does that have anything to do with this?” Lucina hadn’t expected her aunt to actually answer her as she asked that. She had figured she would get some response that acknowledged that a question had been posed, but it would completely dodge the real answer.

But Lissa must have not known a good way to lie about the truth. “It does. He thought this was going to be the place he left behind for your mother and you, and when that never came to happen he must’ve assumed nothing would change from how things were at that moment.” She reached back for the picture Lucina had been given in exchange for a different one, one the girl had a harder time figuring out. There was the young version of her aunt again, and a very much younger version of her dad, but standing between them was a woman that Lucina had only ever seen in the form of a golden statue—her other aunt Emmeryn. “I’m pretty sure your dad’s never actually shown you Emm before, so, um, that’s what she looked like when she was still around.”

“Did she ever see this house? Did she like it?” The small headshake Lissa gave her was enough to tell Lucina not to press further on that front, the sad look in her aunt’s eyes only growing stronger. “Oh well, I bet she would have liked it if she would have seen it. Just like she would have liked me.” She passed the picture back and assumed that the next picture she would be handed, if there even was one, would be going back further in time. It was then a surprise to be given something more recent to be looking at, a picture of a scene that she herself was in, but the image was one that sent shivers down the girl’s spine to see. “Auntie Lissa, why are you having me look at—“

“If you don’t want to see it, you don’t have to. You’re the one who asked about what was making me go so slowly, if you didn’t want to see everything you could have said so.” The response that cut her off was cold and harsh, almost unexpected from her kind aunt’s mouth, but even still Lucina didn’t want to put the picture down. The memories of the event that was depicted were fuzzy at best, but she could still faintly remember the beeping of the machines, the smell of all the cleaning products being used, the constant sound of someone crying… “I didn’t even know that I’d kept any pictures from when my baby almost died, I thought I threw them all away when I accidentally printed them.”

“That was a sad time,” Lucina said, not really sure what else there was to say. She handed that picture back over to her aunt and watched as she slid it into a small pile to the side of where she sat, the picture on the top of that pile one from her wedding that she seemed to want to discard. Before she could ask why that might have been, though, she was handed something else, not a picture but rather a small journal. Looking at the book she now hand in her grasp, she asked, “Why are you giving me this now? I don’t know if you want me to see this or if you didn’t mean to give me it or anything.”

“I like the cover of the journal but I can’t bring myself to look at anything that’s in there. Gods know if I asked Chrom to do what I need done, he’d chide me for everything written in those pages, and Robin would tell him everything because it never was her place to get mad about me doing anything. Maribelle’s got a big mouth and would tell everyone what I wrote, and I can’t ask any other child because chances are, they’d rip the cover.” Lissa let her thoughts on the matter linger for a moment before she shook them away, waving a hand at Lucina. “I just need you to rip everything out of there. Not like you’d be able to read my handwriting in there anyway, I wasn’t a very good writer back then and I’m still not now.”

Still looking at the journal, something told Lucina this wasn’t the best idea in the world, but she didn’t dare speak up that concern. If her aunt was asking her to do something, she shouldn’t question it, she figured. “I just want to tape pictures into the empty shell of the journal, so seriously take out every page of the thing. Got to make this moving houses thing a way to brush off past parts of myself.” Lissa stood up, several envelopes filled with pictures in her hands. “I’m going to go see if we’ve got somewhere safe I can put these for the move, you can go back to your room once you’ve torn those pages out.”

“Okay, Auntie Lissa, I guess.” Her hands felt weird holding the journal, knowing that her aunt had written things inside of it that she probably wasn’t supposed to know, but maybe that was why she’d been asked to take the pages out. She wouldn’t know the reason for what’s been written, and although she did ask questions about almost everything she encountered that she didn’t understand, she wasn’t going to be reading into anything hard enough to catch things she didn’t know. Opening the book to its first page and tenderly grabbing it to tug it out in one motion, she saw that it was covered in small doodles and Lissa’s name elaborately written in a writing that she recognized as being Maribelle’s.

After the first page came pages upon pages that looked to be tear-stained and damaged, words on them crossed out and written over. Lucina wasn’t trying to read everything, she was just trying to carefully pull the pages out, but her eyes would catch glimpses of words that made her curious, the most prominent in those first pages being Emmeryn’s name. Over and over again, it seemed her aunt had been writing a lot about Emmeryn, most mentions of her being followed by those cross-marks and tear stains. But after a bit of that, the pages turned to being completely blank, causing Lucina to ask herself if she was supposed to leave those ones alone; her aunt had said to rip them all out, though, so she continued on.

Halfway through the journal was when the entries resumed. The first one mentioned summer and taking classes (a thought that made Lucina shudder, because while she liked school she didn’t think she could ever handle school in the summer), and it was followed by talk of getting a job and then, a few pages later, in all blocky letters that it looked like Lissa had fun drawing: _I have a boyfriend now!!_

Everything that followed talked a lot about said boyfriend and how happy she was to have him, even if her protective brother Chrom wasn’t thrilled with it. “I guess Daddy doesn’t like anyone Auntie Lissa likes,” Lucina said to herself as she pulled out more pages that were covered in lovesick entries. “But that’s okay, ‘cause as long as she likes them that’s what…” She trailed off as she got to another tear-stained page, her curious eyes trying to figure out what had made her aunt so sad when she’d filled that page, especially after so many that were so happy and cute. At the words _taking off my dress_ , Lucina closed her eyes tight and tugged the page out of its binding, discarding it onto the stack of all the previous pages. “…oh no I don’t think I’m supposed to have seen that. Um.”

From there on, she was careful not to read too much on any given page, no matter how curious she got about what was happening on it. She would look at some of the drawings that her aunt had made on any given page, because they were typically pretty safe and involved all clothing being where it belonged, but as for the words, she tried ignoring as many of them as possible. As she got to the later pages of the journal, the drawings seemed to change, going from assorted doodles to what seemed like a rough drawing of Lissa herself—with just a handful of pages left in the journal that drawing had gone from looking pretty similar to the aunt she knew to looking just like she had in one of those pictures she’d been shown the last time she was there in her aunt’s room. Her finger tracing over the last such drawing, Lucina felt bad for having gone through and ripped out all the pages she already had, realizing that this might not have been something for anyone, especially not her, to have done.

As was to be expected, the next pages mentioned Owain a lot, and then with two pieces of paper to follow it there was a page all about the wedding, the very next page completely blank aside from a few stray pen marks. Taking in a breath to ready herself announcing that she was finished, Lucina took out the blank page and was left staring at the one page that she realized was the entire reason for why Lissa couldn’t have done this herself. The writing was different, rushed and with occasional marks that looked like someone had tried grabbing the pen from her hand as she was writing, but it was just legible enough that Lucina could make out what had been written. _-is he leaving because he’s not ‘good’ enough, or because I’m not? A woman gives him her everything and this is what she gets in return?_

“You got to the end, didn’t you?” Lissa’s voice caught Lucina by complete surprise, her having gotten far too into reading that page to realize her aunt had come back. “I…hate thinking about that, and whenever they start fighting it just reminds me that I’ve thrown fighting words at Vaike that he’ll never know about and I just…can’t handle that.”

Ripping that last page out with more force than she’d used on any of the previous pages, Lucina felt a bit at peace when she tossed it onto the pile, the blank back side of the page facing up for her and her aunt to see. “I think I get why you wanted me to do this,” she said, handing the empty shell of the journal to her aunt. “You didn’t want to use talking to tell me what happened, so you had me read it. I’m glad I can read, I guess.” There was no sign that she was actually “glad” about how she’d found out something that had haunted her mind for nearly a year, not when she looked to her aunt and saw her once again on the verge of tears, smiling even though her eyes were glistening. “Auntie Lissa…”

“Go on ahead and go pack your room up some more, I’ll be fine and I can handle everything in here.” Not letting her niece sit there any longer, she repeated her command a couple of times until Lucina reluctantly got up and headed for the door, but she stopped her before she could leave. “Lucy, thank you so much for doing this for me, it was a bit of a weird request and I’m sure you don’t appreciate having done it now that it’s over, but it means a lot that you did it for me.”

“You’re welcome, I learned a few things and now I don’t have to ask questions.” Forcing a smile at her aunt, she quickly got out of the room before any more teary thanks could be given. She sighed once she was out in the hall, leaning over to rest her hands on her knees and take a few breaths before standing back upright and making her way to her room. She was stopped a couple of steps before her door, sounds of conversation coming from her parents’ room. She’d already gotten the chance to snoop once that day, did she really need to take advantage of another opportunity?

Judging by the way their door was open and she could hear things being thrown, listening in on them might not have been the best idea if she happened to get caught. With that decision made, she went back into her room and saw that the box she’d already filled was gone, leaving her room a bit emptier than it had been before. “Okay, guess I’ve gotta pack more stuff to get to do anything else,” she told herself, grabbing another box and setting it near her small closet. “So maybe books and stuff would be good this time.”

Packing up her room was a lot less stressful than it seemed everyone else was finding packing their own rooms, because she was able to fill the second box with relative ease. Her father didn’t come in to tape it up right away, though, so she had to pull a third and set it next to the other one to start filling it as well. On that box, she encountered a few things in her closet that she didn’t think she’d need anymore, mainly broken toys that she’d hidden away, so she set those off in their own pile and continued on without giving them another thought. It took yet another box to get everything she could reach out of her closet put away, and with the excess room in it she started pulling things out from under her bed and tossing them either in that box or in the trash pile.

By the time she was finished with that box, she felt that she’d done a pretty good starting job on packing her room. Her toys were taken care of, everything except the things hidden above her reach in her closet was done, and a good amount of her under-bed collection was packed, the rest put into the trash pile. All that was left was her clothing and the furniture in her room, and she wasn’t going to do that right then. Leaving her room and the three filled boxes on her floor, she walked past her parents’ room to hear it completely silent, so she poked her head inside and saw a few half-filled boxes sitting on the floor but many, many piles of clothing and things scattered around. If they weren’t in there, she wasn’t sure where they could have been, so she continued on her search for them. The house wasn’t big, but they did have a lot of stuff to store away…

“Lucina, you’re out of your room,” her father said as he caught her while she was walking past her aunt’s room, him standing in the doorway talking to his sister. “I’m taking that as it being finished for the most part. Do you want to help your aunt again?”

“I really don’t,” she replied, not stopping walking, “because Mom said if I packed I could play and I want to get to play at least a little bit today. This moving thing is hard.” She neglected to mention that she also didn’t want to have to deal with possibly learning more things about her aunt’s life that she hadn’t wanted to know, the dress line still haunting her thoughts. Chrom accepted his daughter’s denial of his request without a word, letting her continue on without argument. Once she was in the living room, people milling around with their arms filled with things they were putting into boxes, she gave a loud sigh, hoping her mother would hear it and come rushing to see what was going on.

When she only got a few looks from the adults that were nearby, she furrowed her eyebrows and tried again, throwing her arms up to make it more dramatic. She still didn’t get the reaction she wanted from the person she was looking for, but she did get someone to set down the box they were carrying towards the door to come closer to her. “You okay, small child?” the man asked, his speech broken but friendly. “Is all fine?”

She nodded, shocked that this man had approached her. “It is, I’m just looking for my mom. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Lots of moms are here today, good luck to you!” He reached out and ruffled her hair, making her flinch back at the strange man’s touch. “Oh, please do not worry, Gregor is friendly! You are young like my Laurent, are you not?”

Lucina’s face lit up at mention of her book-loving, condescending friend that she was actively trying to get to go hang out with. “Yes! Laurent’s my friend, he’s really cool when he wants to be. But I’m older than him, way older. He’s Owain’s age, not mine.”

“Young children are the same, years are no matter. Good luck to you on your mother search, Gregor will be assisting with the move!” He pulled his hand back and gave Lucina a thumbs-up, before heading over to the box he’d set down and picking it back up. As he headed out the door, he called to her, “Have fun with my son!”

“Gods, what is that man going on about, Laurent is outside where he belongs and—oh, hello there Lucina.” Coming from the kitchen to see who her husband was talking to, Miriel saw Lucina standing there with her eyes on the door and made the mental connection to the two events. “You must be searching for your mother for permission to step outside to partake in the childish happenings going on. You are in luck, because we have been having a conversation in the kitchen. Come with, you’ll be able to speak with her without much delay if you follow me.”

This was a woman that Lucina had met multiple times, having spent a lot of time hanging around her son, and while she had never before then met her friend’s father, she knew that she could trust his mother. “Okay, miss Miriel, I trust you.” Putting a finger to one of her cheeks to act cute, the older woman was completely dismissive of the action and turned right back towards the kitchen, frustrating Lucina enough to get her to rethink following her, but there was no reason to go back on that trust. It wasn’t just Robin sitting in the kitchen when she got there, but it seemed that whatever it was that she, Miriel, and Severa’s mother had been doing, it was something important.

“It seems the culprit of ‘small child’ in the house is none other than your original pride and joy, Robin,” Miriel said, making a flourishing hand gesture in Lucina’s direction. “Here we were, assuming it would be someone who did not belong, or worse, Severa coming in once more, if I am to understand your reaction to Gregor’s comment correctly, Cordelia.”

“I wasn’t worried it was Severa again, I just hoped she finally got over me sending her outside and was starting to enjoy the company of other children for once in her life.” Propping her head on her hand, her elbow resting on a box on the kitchen counter, Cordelia sighed deeply. “She’s made helping pack today so difficult, I swear. If I could, I would have left her at home today.”

Robin looked between her two companions before waving for Lucina to approach her. “I think once we send this girl outside, your daughter will be able to learn a lesson or two on how to appreciate children. Although how she hasn’t learned that yet with a father who runs an orphanage is beyond me.” When Lucina got close enough to her mother, she got up from her chair and wrapped her daughter in a hug, the girl getting pressed up against the curve of her mother’s stomach. “This one here, she’ll make for an excellent older sister when the time comes, she’s so great with other kids already.”

“That’s ‘cause I’ve grown up with Owain, remember?” Not wanting to be in the position she currently was being held in, especially not when there were people looking at her, Lucina squirmed out of her mother’s hug and huffed once she was on her own. “And because I’ve always gotten to play with other kids and been told that being mean is wrong.” That wasn’t the point she needed to be making, so even though her mother was slightly offended as she looked at her, she simply told her, “I packed most of my room, so can I go play now?”

“I suppose that was the agreement, you packed and then you get to play, but I’m surprised you didn’t want to stay around and see if Morgan’ll start kicking for you to feel.” Mention of getting to feel the baby made Lucina regret pulling away from the hug like she had, but she pushed that regret away the moment she saw Cordelia’s eyes widen and her move from her bored position at the counter to grabbing Robin’s stomach with both hands. “Er, Cordelia? What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’ve been longing to feel a baby move for quite some time, my apologies.” Pulling back as quickly as she’d gotten there, Cordelia hung her head, her red bangs falling in front of her face. “As I’m sure you can figure, raising a child that cannot tolerate other children, even ones being raised very close by, doesn’t make me feel comfortable in deciding to have another kid, ever. So I have to take what I can by living through others.”

“Well if you want to try and feel him moving, at least ask before you do it. Just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean everyone suddenly has permission to lay their hands on me.” Laughing, Robin didn’t seem too unhappy with what Cordelia had done, and so when the hands came flying right back she took it in stride. “Now we just have to hope he’s actually going to move around at all today, but if he doesn’t, at least we tried.”

Lucina could have stayed there and watched her mom get touched by her friend, but she really wanted to go outside and she had the permission she’d needed so why should she had waited any longer? Without saying a word, she turned and ran towards the front door, narrowly missing a side table as it was being carried outside, and once she was out in the early-spring sunshine she could hear the chatter of all the kids that were out there waiting for her. That inspired her to move quicker, once again barely missing getting hit by that same table (and hearing an under-breath curse aimed in her direction), reaching the front lawn and everyone gathered there in no time.

“Aren’t you supposed to be packing up, Lucina?” Maribelle asked, looking up from the textbook she had on her lap to see the girl standing like she belonged outside. “Like, pretty sure your parents both told me that you weren’t coming out here. Get back inside.”

“I did enough to get allowed to come out, miss Maribelle,” she replied, proudly putting her hands on her hips as if she was sticking it to the woman by correcting her. “And so I’m gonna sit here and—whoa!” Midway through her sentence she was mobbed by all the young girls outside, knocking her to the grass. “H-hi there, everyone! Excited to see me?”

“Lucy, it’s no fun playing at your house without you!” Cynthia yelled, her face incredibly close to Lucina’s ear as she spoke. “Yeah, there are others here, but you’re the best!”

“I’m the best too,” Severa asserted, trying to push Cynthia away, “and since we’re both best I just have’ta play with you! My mom said you were gonna play with me when you could! You heard her!” That was a lie, as Lucina distinctly remembered Cordelia asking if she would possibly spend a moment with the girl later, not play with her. “Get off of her, I’m playing with her first!”

In the end, though, neither of them were the winner of that battle, as Kjelle, clinging to Lucina’s legs, chose to bite them until they both backed off, them screaming at their youngest adversary in the battle of who got to spend time with Lucina first. “Did you really have to use your teeth on them?” Lucina ended up asking, knowing she wasn’t going to get a verbal response from the girl. All Kjelle did was grin at her and grab her hand, trying to tug her along somewhere to accomplish something. “I don’t think we’re going exploring today, not when we’re outside and miss Maribelle’s watching us. Sorry, kiddo.”

The defiant look on Kjelle’s face showed that she was not going to be taking no for an answer, even though Lucina wasn’t budging an inch and the other two girls were rubbing at their bite marks and loudly asking each other what they were going to do to get payback on the little girl. They were able to get as far as Severa asking if biting the girl back was allowed before action was taken against her for it, and although it _should_ have been Maribelle dishing out any punishment for the behavior, she was too wrapped up in reading her law book to notice that one of the packing adults had come out to check on everyone and had overheard the phrase “biting Kjelle”.

That was how, in one quick motion, Severa was lifted up from where she was sitting in the grass and put into a loose headlock, the arm pinning her in place clearly flexing and showing off muscle. “Want to run that one by me again there, little girl? Talking about biting my daughter, are you? You’ll regret those words if you meant them.”

“I d-didn’t mean them, she bit me first though!” Trying to make the fault in the issue not seem like it was her own, Severa was panicking as she was being held in the headlock, kicking at the woman who held her. “Put me down! I’ll get my daddy!”

“Your dad wouldn’t do a damn thing when he found out you’d been talking about hurting my child!” Still, even with that being said, Sully was quick to put Severa back where she’d been sitting when she saw the girl’s father walking over towards them to see what his child had been screaming about. She did try explaining to him what her reasoning was, saying, “Look, I get it, she’s an irredeemable brat, but someone’s got to teach her a lesson using some real force. Figured I’d give her a taste of it.”

“That is very kind of you to attempt to correct her flaws, but she was given these flaws for a reason to train Cordelia and myself as parents. Please do not lay a finger on my daughter again.” His voice as soft as his smile and general expression, Libra bent down to attempt picking Severa up, her scooting away from him before he could get his hands on her. “As you wish, Severa dearest. Do not use this against me later.”

Once the two adults were gone, Cynthia came back to being by Severa, leaning close to her yet loudly asking, “Why’d you hide from your dad when he tried getting you? That’s a silly thing to do!”

“If he picked me up I would’ve told him I wanted to bite that stupid baby, and then he would’ve gotten mad and I would’ve been in trouble.” Casting a death glare at Kjelle, Severa upturned her nose and gave a loud _hmph_. “She started it, her mom should’ve left me alone.”

“As I have been trying to warn you all day, picking a fight with Kjelle is basically picking a fight with her mother.” Speaking up from where he was reading in the shade and listening to everything that had happened, Laurent seemed to tick Severa off with his comment but he didn’t mind. “It was only a matter of time until you managed to do it, and you were unable to handle her getting angry.”

“Laurent’s right, if you upset Kjelle you upset her mom too.” Lucina’s voice was one that would be listened to, even if she really was just parroting what had been said. “It’s like, if you picked on Brady right now, his mom _and_ his sister would get on you.”

The light in Severa’s eyes at the suggestion was enough to get Cynthia to take some premature action and tackle her friend to the ground to stop her. “Oh no, you do not touch my little brother at all, ever! He’s too little for you to be mean to him!”

“Er, Kjelle’s littler than Brady is and it’s okay to be mean to her?” Confused, Lucina didn’t bother listening to the explanation that Cynthia gave as to why it was indeed okay (she tuned it out long before being bitten was brought up, not sure if there was any good reason for why that double standard should have existed). She instead looked over to where Maribelle was still reading her book, unaware of any of the child drama that had unfolded under her watch, before looking back to Kjelle, who was sitting up against her leg, picking the barely-growing grass and throwing it back down at the ground. “I don’t get it, why are people so weird sometimes?”

When she got a big smile from the girl and a handful of grass thrown into her face, it wasn’t really an acceptable answer but it was definitely the one she had been expecting to get.

* * *

The next morning was a lot of the same thing that the previous day had been; when Lucina woke up and got dressed, her half-empty room a bit jarring to wake up to, she went out into the living room to see a lot of the same people from the day before standing around. “Am I gonna have to pack more today, or can I just go play with the kids already?” she asked her father as he stood by the front door, marking things off of a checklist someone had pinned into the wall beside it. “Please say I can play.”

“No can do, Lucina. If we keep our pace up from yesterday, we’ll be able to be done with everything here at this house by the end of the day tomorrow. That means no slacking on your end, or on anyone’s end, really.” Chrom made a few tally marks on the list, tapping the pen he was using on one line in particular. “If you can get everything except your bed and what clothes you need the next couple of days taken care of, we can get everything out of there aside from that stuff today, put it all in your new room, and then move what’s left at the very end. Sound like a plan?”

“It sounds like something, sure, Daddy,” she replied, jutting out her lower lip to try and get him to rethink what he’d just said. “But I really wanna play right now, and if you’re making me pack I can’t.”

“Trying to look cute to get sympathy isn’t going to work on me. Now get to packing, there’s so much that needs to get done and not a lot of time to do it.” He looked down at her as she was trying to muster up some tears, the act still not changing his mind. When he went to start doing his own task from on the list, she had the thought to go outside and see what kids were out there already, but she knew that she’d be caught sneaking off if she tried it. That meant that, until she got her room taken care of, she was stuck in the house.

But no one ever said that being stuck in the house meant that she was going to actually go do as she’d been told. When she walked by her aunt’s room, she was unsurprised to see it was mostly the same as it had been the last time she left it, although all of the trash was long gone, but she was surprised to see it wasn’t just her aunt sitting in there sifting through things. The surprise only grew when the joiner _wasn’t_ her uncle, nor was it her cousin, or Maribelle, or anyone she’d have thought it would be. In fact, it was someone who hadn’t been at the house the day before. “So tell me again, Ricken,” Lissa said, her back turned to the door so she didn’t see Lucina standing there, listening to her every word, “what did you _do_ to get her to do this?”

“I don’t know, that’s the thing! I told you last time we talked, I thought it might have just been the stress of everything getting to her, but she changed the lock on the door to the apartment, so I can’t even get in to get my stuff, and when I tried texting her about it all she did was send me pictures of the papers again!” He was also turned to not be facing the door, but Lucina could tell that Ricken was upset with his every word. “I thought when I married her, everything was going to go as great for us as it had before then…”

“She sent pictures of the papers before she’s bothered sending you a picture of your baby? Have you even gotten to meet him yet?” Reaching for something in front of her, Lissa didn’t need to hear more than Ricken’s quiet no in response to snap back with, “Oh my gods and you haven’t fought her about this? That’s your son, Ricken! You’ve got to be allowed to see him sometime!”

He nodded in sync with her words, not saying anything of his own but pulling something up on his phone screen that he was showing to Lissa as she finished speaking. After a few moments of her typing something on his phone and them both looking at it, he finally spoke again. “I bet she’ll agree to showing me a picture of him if I sign the papers and get this divorce thing happening, but I just don’t get what I did wrong. We were dating for a while, I thought I really knew her, and then this all happened!”

“I guess it doesn’t matter how well you know someone, once you marry them everything changes, and it sucks but it’s how it goes.” When Ricken’s phone went off moments later, Lissa snatched it from his hands, reading whatever he was sent before he got the chance, and Lucina tried her best to see it but her aunt’s head was perfectly blocking any sight she might have had of the screen. “She’s crazy, that’s all there is to it. What kind of woman marries a guy just to have his kid and promptly demand that he leave her alone, forever?”

“The kind of woman I just happened to get with, I suppose.” The conversation was interesting to Lucina, as she hadn’t really known much about the lady that Ricken had married because she’d only met her a couple of times before, but she knew that she wasn’t supposed to have been listening. If she were to get caught, which was all-too likely given the amount of people around the house right then, she might have had to explain what all she’d heard, and that wasn’t anything she wanted to do. Her mind told her to step away and do as she’d been asked to do, but her heart, knowing they’d been somewhat talking about a kid, told her to stay until trouble was imminent.

“What are you going to do about her? If I were you, I’d go back to that apartment and demand I saw the baby before I signed anything, and even then I’d be hesitant to sign anything because she might be asking you to sign away his life, or worse, yours.” Lissa was handing the phone back over to Ricken, as it went off again without prompting. “Oh, did she send something else now?”

“It’s a…oh gods, it’s him. He’s…” Choking up as he spoke, Ricken dropped his phone and leaned forward, most likely cradling his head in his hands, as Lucina could see him fiddling with both of his ears as he held his head. “Lissa, she’s blaming me for him not being able to hear! That’s what this whole problem is!”

“I’d think there’s a lot more to it that just that, seeing as she’s had you kicked out for months, but that’s a good place to start with this sudden request of a divorce and all that.” Leaning over to give a comforting back pat to her friend, Lissa reached with her other hand to grab the phone to look at what he’d been sent. “Aw, he’s a real cutie. Shame he looks so much like his mom, and that he can’t hear things, but he’s still cute.”

“I can’t even handle this right now. I’ve got to talk to someone who can help me out of this. That’s my…he’s my…my baby. I can’t just let his mother walk all over me because she thinks it’s my fault he’s deaf!” At that proclamation, Lucina figured it was about time she left listening in on them, because soon enough Ricken would probably be going to find someone more knowledgeable to talk to, and him seeing her in the doorway wasn’t a good idea. Now knowing what she knew (and having nothing to do with this information), she finished walking to her room and looked around at it in its half-empty state, deciding that it was about time she finished the job in there.

Besides, maybe when she was done packing, she could hear more of the conversation elsewhere! And if that didn’t happen, there was always the consolation that she would be able to play with the other kids again, even if it wasn’t the full group that had been there the day before. Both of those were motivators to get her packing, and by the time a couple of hours had gone by, Lucina had managed to get all of her clothing into two boxes, and that wasn’t even all of the clothes but she had tried on every single thing to make sure she wasn’t keeping anything that wasn’t going to be worth it. From there, all she could think of that remained in her room was the furniture, those high-up things in her closet that she couldn’t reach, and the three outfits she’d set aside for the coming days. “That was a lot easier than I thought it would be,” she told herself, eager to get out of her shell of a room and to where anything else might have been happening.

The hallway was now missing all of its decorations when she walked through it, the pictures that had hung on the wall being taken down and the shelves that had held other collectables now sitting on the floor, waiting to be put in a vehicle to make the move to the new house. While seeing her room emptied out wasn’t affecting her, seeing other parts of the house lose what had made them so special was getting to her. “Be careful, we dropped a nail or two earlier when getting some of those pictures out and no one’s been able to find any of them,” Stahl warned her as he was carrying one end of one of the dressers from her parents’ room down the hall behind her a bit. “And you’re not wearing any shoes, it would be really bad if you happened to be the one stepping on it.”

“Ya mean ya didn’t even try lookin’ for them after ya dropped ‘em?” Setting his side of the dresser down to give his friend a confused look, Vaike picked it right back up after he got a small shrug in response. “Eh, can’t blame ya. With how much Chrom’s gettin' on all ‘a us ‘bout gettin’ everything done, findin’ nails ain’t exactly the most important thing.”

“I’m glad you can see why I thought that same thing when we couldn’t find them in the first place. Hopefully they turn up without anyone stepping on them, that would just end badly for everyone involved.” Not showing that he’d been bothered by having been holding the dresser up when the other side had been set down, Stahl once again started making headway towards the door, Vaike mere steps behind him, and Lucina walking ahead of them both, turned backwards to watch as the took the piece of furniture outside.

“You’re out and walking around, I’m taking this as you being done with your room, eh Lucina?” Chrom asked, once again standing at the checklist but with his back turned to it. When she nodded, he turned around and marked that her room was finished. “Excellent. Next person who comes inside with working arms and the ability to carry a box is taking everything possible out of there.”

Lucina leaned her head back a bit, giving her dad a surprised look as he turned back around to face her. “But you have working arms, Daddy, can’t you do it?”

“I’m supervising my own things being taken out, I can’t do that and get your things too.” He reached out to Lucina and tried to set his head on the top of her head, but she leaned back even further to keep away from him. “Ahem, anyway, there’s plenty of people around today who could take care of it. I mean, I wouldn’t ask any of my heavy-lifters to stop moving furniture to do that, although asking Vaike to break up the gossip session happening in his room might be a better use of his time…” Chrom glanced to the door, waiting for someone to come walking in. “But if I move him, then I’ll have to ask Stahl to either carry lighter things or wait until someone else who can carry the furniture gets back.”

“Gets back? People get to go places?” Suddenly the idea of getting to go out into the front yard as a reward didn’t seem so appealing to Lucina. “Where do they get to go?”

“They’re taking things over to the new house. Your mom’s got the car right now with some boxes, and she’s got…someone with her. Cordelia, perhaps? Or maybe it was Sully, but why would she have gone with…” He began tapping the side of his head, trying to recount where everyone enlisted to help was currently stationed. “I know Gregor’s at the new house, haven’t heard the truck he brought with him in a little while, and he has to have someone with him to get the stuff out of there so—oh why do the specifics matter, those four are over there right now and that’s that.”

“Daddy, I don’t think I get why you’re telling me this,” Lucina said, still at a distance from her father and actively growing sad that she wasn’t informed anyone was over at the new house until just then. “I just want to get to go play, which you haven’t said I could do yet.”

Ignoring her and her reminder of her purpose, Chrom continued on trying to place everyone to their location. “Pretty sure Libra had said he needed to get back to his job for a couple hours so he’s nowhere to be found, so who does that leave here for me to have take the boxes outside? I think the only one I haven’t named off that’s here today is Frederick, but he’s in charge of making sure the furniture gets safely put in the back of the truck we’ve got here. He’s not going to come inside until that’s done, which means he’ll be in after the other two, so it’s got to be one of them.”

“I’m just gonna…go outside now.” Deciding waiting for her father to tell her she could was a complete waste of her time, Lucina took a couple steps towards the door and was nearly knocked over by someone rushing inside for something. She stumbled back, a bit stunned at what had just happened, and her first thought was to look towards her father as he still stood by the checklist, his focus to where the incoming person had ran off to.

“Gods damn it, I say you’re not coming in and then you rush in here! Frederick! What are you doing!” Not moving from his post, Chrom could hear the sounds of water running in the kitchen from where he stood, and when his friend came back towards the front door with a dish towel that seemed to be soaked, dripping everywhere, he held an arm out to bar Frederick from exiting the house. “Not so fast. What did you guys manage to do out there? Get a little dirt on the dresser?”

“Chrom, this is a serious matter that has nothing to do with the furniture.” As Frederick spoke, the sound of children crying (or, more specifically, one loud howling cry over the rest of the noise) could be heard from outside. “There was a slight incident involving a child and as I was the only person with enough sense to come in and get something to take care of it, I need to get back out there and handle things.”

“An incident? Doesn’t Maribelle know how to watch kids?” Watching as Frederick visibly tensed up at the name he’d mentioned, Chrom shook his head and sighed. “Whatever, you go and handle whatever it is that happened. Times like this remind me why you’re always so busy, you’re constantly making sure to take care of everyone else around you.”

Wasting no time to get back outside with his wet towel, Frederick didn’t give any sort of verbal response to Chrom’s comment, simply leaving to head outside to the source of the crying. Lucina, curious as to what was going on, followed him out, her ears picking up on the fact that there was a distinctly adult and female scream accompanying the children’s cries, meaning that whatever had happened, it was probably upsetting Maribelle. That only made her more curious, because she’d heard a lot about how much she did not like Frederick, so why would he be bothering to help her if something was wrong?

The reason, yet another thing about the people around her that Lucina vaguely knew but didn’t understand, was that what had happened had, in fact, happened to the one person out there that both of the involved adults would care about. When she got out into the front yard, she saw all the other kids that were there gathered in a group, Owain sitting at the forefront with an opened parasol in his hands, holding it up over the girls around him, while they all collectively looked like they’d seen and heard death. Between them and where Maribelle was with Frederick hovering over her, another, half-opened parasol was sitting on the ground, looking like it had been dropped by someone in a hurry. Lucina didn’t even have the time to ask herself why that might have been when she heard the familiar crying she had grown used to hearing after school each and every day…

And that was when she finally looked at what Maribelle and Frederick were doing and at the first glimpse she got of the dish towel, now bloodied, she could feel herself starting to go pale. Her feet could only take her so fast, but when she ran into the house her father knew something was truly amiss. “What’s got you going so fast, Lucina?” he asked, still in his spot there by the door. “Decide that playing wasn’t what you needed to be doing?”

She didn’t know how to articulate her thoughts, all she knew was that there was blood and two adults that didn’t like each other were having to cooperate to do something to the one thing shared between them. “I think someone might have killed Brady, maybe,” she finally said, watching as Chrom had to do a double-take at her statement. “I don’t know! Miss Maribelle is really upset and there’s blood and I don’t really know!”

“She really can’t watch kids, especially not her own. Let me go see what’s happening, I suppose.” That was the first time she’d seen him leave that spot in all the time she’d been talking to him that day, and it was to go investigate what she was afraid was a murder. It wasn’t actually anything close to it, but it was still bad enough that once all the other adults were back from the new house they chose to calm their scared children over getting any more moving done that day.

It might have ended up being a waste of a perfectly good afternoon, but almost everyone came back the following day knowing that they needed to get everything finished before they left that night—and Maribelle came back coddling her son as he had a completely bandaged left eye, the short threads of stitches visible at the upper part of the bandage. “We’re lucky it’s just a bad scrape, but it could have been _so_ much worse,” she assured everyone that was there. “That’s the last time I ever ask my darling to open a parasol for his mommy, isn’t it?”

Predictably, the boy didn’t answer her, even though he seemed to be nodding in agreement with her words. “I’m glad it wasn’t any worse than it was, although it was a pretty deep cut when I got out here to see it. You and Frederick made for a good team on taking care of everything.” Chrom coughed out the last sentence, knowing how awkward it was not just for him to say it, but for her to hear it. “I’m going to just…head back in the house. Lots of packing needs to be done today.” As he went inside, Lucina, who had followed him out and had been playing the part of his shadow, considered going inside as well, but she was stopped by the lack of certain children outside that day.

“Um, miss Maribelle?” she piped up, after making sure to look around for everyone she could. “I know Laurent wasn’t here yesterday, ‘cause his mom wasn’t here, but where’s Severa? She would love to have a day where I could play with her all the time.”

Taking her spot in the yard that she’d had the previous two days, although this time with Brady in her lap instead of a textbook, Maribelle shrugged. “Not my problem to know where the kids who aren’t here are. I’m just watching them when they are here.”

“Oh, okay.” She wasn’t satisfied with the answer, but she was going to have to accept it because there wasn’t anyone else she could ask who would tell her. For a short while she fell into a pattern of playing with Cynthia for a couple minutes, before having to focus on Kjelle a little bit so that the youngest girl didn’t feel left out, but the repetition grew old fast. These were the same kids she always got to play with, where was the girl who was so rude yet was sometimes so entertaining to be with?

Cynthia seemed to notice that Lucina’s mind was elsewhere, constantly looking out towards the street rather than to whoever she was playing with at that moment. “You looking for Severa too, huh?” she asked, getting a nod from Lucina. “Yeah, I dunno where she is. She’s a meanie though so her being gone is okay!”

“What if something happened to her? I’m just scared for her.” Admitting her worry made her feel a bit better and allowed for her to focus on who was there a little more, but Lucina was still spending a lot of time checking to see if Severa or either of her parents were going to show up. When they didn’t, she knew she’d have to ask one of her own parents to see if they knew anything, but bothering either of them would be hard when her father was finally getting in on actually moving things and her mother was spending more time over at the new house than the old one.

She was given her opportunity when her mother came back to the house with lunch for everyone who was helping out, bags upon bags of everything needed to make sandwiches tor the group that had gathered. While she was getting out of the car and grabbing the food, Lucina stopped whatever mindless playing she was doing to go approach her, ready to ask the question she needed to. But before she could even get a single word out, another car came up to the house, Cordelia and her long red hair getting out and coming to Robin’s side before Lucina’s question could be asked. “Oh, you came over after all,” Robin said at Cordelia’s appearance, sounding surprised by it. “Are you here to help out, or to help me, or what?”

“I knew it was lunchtime so I figured coming to assist with feeding everyone was a good idea, because I need to tell you why we completely skipped on showing up to finish the move today.” Her eyes showed tiredness, as if she’d been up for a long time, and the disheveled look she had to her clothing made Lucina wonder if something really had gone wrong with her friend. Robin didn’t seem to be as put off by how Cordelia looked, and she accepted the offer of help with making lunch. “I promise this won’t be too long of a story, I can tell it while we prepare.”

“Making sandwiches for any sort of group won’t take but a few minutes, but if you’re sure your story’ll be short enough to fit that time…” Robin laughed, closing her door with her hip as she had both hands filled with bags. “It doesn’t matter, we can talk even after we’re done making lunch. No need to rush things.”

The two ladies headed inside, still talking about how long making lunch would take, and Lucina followed them in, passing by several stacks of boxes that were waiting to be taken to the new house. The living room, which had been empty aside from the couch that morning, was filled with as much furniture from the bedrooms as it could hold, mattresses and bedframes taking up most of the space. The kitchen was empty as well, everything left inside of it things that were not making the move, which was why so much had been bought for lunch. “Mom, can I help?” Lucina asked once she realized that her mother hadn’t noticed her presence to begin with, startling the woman a bit but she accepted the offer, handing her daughter a stack of paper plates, telling her to separate them all so they could make sandwiches on them.

It was a mindless task, but it was one that let her be right there to listen in on the conversation. “As I told you when I messaged that we wouldn’t be able to assist today, we were woken up early this morning to the sounds of a child crying, but not the sounds of a four-year-old crying. I mean, shrill newborn crying.” Cordelia was opening bags of bread and separating them into stacks of two for everyone as she spoke, her voice showing the strain of having been up since early. “Whether the person who abandoned the baby meant to give her to us or to the orphanage, I wish I knew, but when we found her we saw that she was merely hours old, if even, and if she’d been left outside a moment longer she might not have survived until sunrise.”

“Are you serious?” Robin sounded like she spoke with disbelief, but her jaw-dropped expression showed that she was enthralled with the story already. “How fortunate the child was outside your home then, huh?”

“Incredibly fortunate! I brought her inside and warmed her up while Libra searched the surrounding area trying to find the mother, but when he came back with no leads we were left with this precious and tiny newborn in our care…and then she went completely still, as if she had died there in my arms.” Another bag of bread was opened, and although her words were sad Cordelia didn’t seem bothered by them. “When she came out of her trance, whatever it was that caused it, Libra and I discussed the course of action we should take with her, given that she was abandoned at our home.”

Robin nodded along with the story, her task in lunch-making being to decorate the sandwiches with a little bit of everything else she had bought. “Together you run an orphanage, why doesn’t she just go there?”

“That’s one possibility, for sure, and we did bring that up. But she needs a mother’s constant care, and I feel that raising her alongside all those other children would not be best for her. Raising her alongside one other, however, could work.” Lucina had to turn around and see if Cordelia was going to continue her story or not, because now it was interesting and she’d gone silent. What she saw was the redhead looking at Robin with a smile, while Robin looked back at her with her jaw only dropping further. “I know that Severa will not take too well to having a younger sibling, but we believe that this poor child was given to us for a reason and that reason is to teach us to be better parents the second time around.”

“You’re going to keep her. Cordelia, you were just saying the other day that you couldn’t have another child because of the one you already have, and now you’re taking in an abandoned child because you think she’s a gift from the gods.” Shaking her head, Robin went back to her sandwich-making. “You two are something else, but I wish you all the best with her. If anyone is deserving of raising an orphan child, it’s the people who help get other orphan children into new homes.”

The bags of bread completely emptied, Cordelia was starting on filling the sandwiches as well. “That is our mindset on this, yes. Once she’s finished with seeing a doctor and has been fully evaluated we’ll make our final decision, but bringing her into our family just seems right. Severa is, predictably, unhappy about there being a baby taking our attention from her, but she will learn in time that she still holds our attention.”

“Well, luck to all of you, and hopefully everything works out for the best. Does she have a name?” When Cordelia said that she didn’t, Robin twisted her mouth in thought for a moment before shrugging it off. “You’ll come up with a fitting one for her, I know you will. Making sure she’s okay is much more important than anything else right now, and I respect that you’ve chosen her over us today. Even though,” she motioned towards the sandwiches they were making, “you did come to help a little bit.”

“It was the least I could do, having promised to help out and whatnot.” The two ladies continued talking, but the conversation seemed to no longer include anything about the mystery baby so Lucina stopped paying attention to it. She still helped out with whatever she could in making the meal, which included having to take plates of sandwiches outside to the other kids and Maribelle, but the moment she could get away from having to help, she was right back to playing with what friends she had there. An exact answer for where Severa was hadn’t been given, but that was okay because at least Lucina knew the girl wasn’t dead or hurt and she was only not there because her parents had bigger things to be doing.

Their presence seemed to be missed, because for most of the afternoon and into the evening there were always boxes and furniture sitting waiting to be taken to the new place. Even with two trucks and several cars being used to tote things across the neighborhood to the other house, there wasn’t enough manpower to get everything in and out of the vehicles fast enough to make good progress. Due to that, work continued on until after sunset, a dinner having had to been made for everyone who was still there that only took away from getting things done any faster. But before it got to be too late, the last boxes were put into the back of one of the trucks and the family got to have their one last walkthrough of their old home before leaving it forever.

Lucina would have liked to have been able to say she didn’t cry when she saw her empty bedroom for the last time, but she was already in tears when she stepped inside of it, her cheeks covered when she left. How they’d managed to clear out the entire place in three days was beyond her, but it was done and this part of their lives was now over.

Everyone who had been there to help had moved operations over to the new house, to try and start getting furniture into the rooms where it belonged so that everyone would have somewhere to sleep that night. As the evening dragged on, though, people started leaving to head to their own homes, and it eventually just left Chrom and Vaike as the only people moving furniture around, their cooperation with one another not the greatest. At least the hole they managed to knock into one of the walls on the downstairs floor wasn’t somewhere that people were going to see it, even though they all knew it was going to be there for a long time.

With her bed being the first one put into its proper place, Lucina decided she was going to go to sleep before any fights regarding moving everything else broke out. Her new room was still empty, a couple boxes of her things sitting in the corner but nothing else aside from her bed, and it didn’t feel like it was really hers quite yet, but she knew that feeling would grow in time. At the moment, though, what she needed to focus on was sleeping and getting through the next few months as the family prepared everything for their newest addition, the new house being the first step in that direction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My goal is to get the next (and last??) chapter posted this time next week, but NaNo starts on Tuesday and I have an important project I'm doing for that, so we'll have to see. Apologies in advance for any delays that might happen.


	6. Happy Birthdays

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me spin you a tale of why this took me a month and a half to finish: NaNo happened and I focused on that, then I took a break from writing, and then...I got it done. good story

Finding the time to let things get back to normal in their new home was kind of difficult, Lucina noticed, after it had been a week since the move and everything still felt like it was getting shuffled around. The adults were using whatever free time they had, the school break having gone by far too fast to make too many waves, to try and finish setting up the furniture and belongings they already had, plus having to go buy all-new furniture for a floor of the house their previous place hadn’t had. Lucina hadn’t been allowed to go along on those shopping trips, being told that her getting underfoot would be too dangerous, so she stayed at home with her mother and cousin to pass the time.

Owain hadn’t changed much even though he was finally going to be given his own bedroom (as they didn’t have any furniture for it right away, he’d still been sharing a room with his parents until they could do something about that), and he spent most of those hours sitting next to Lucina talking to her about the same random things he always had. She’d just listen to him, barely acknowledging his words as she was too focused on watching her mother and whatever it was she was doing.

Most of the rearranging of small belongings had fallen onto Robin’s shoulders, and while she had taken great efforts to make sure that the house they now had was decorated very similarly to the one they had left behind, she would still walk around at times and fiddle with the placement of things. “Mom, are you okay? Shouldn’t you be doing stuff for school and not playing with books again?” Lucina asked after watching her mother get up from her spot on the couch to adjust how a few books rested on their shelf. “I don’t think you’re gonna get your homework done…”

“I’m sorry, I’m just oddly bothered by how off-centered the books were laying and needed to fix it.” Moving them into a position she preferred, she sat back down and continued marking at the page of the text she’d been reading—only to get up once again a few minutes later to move the same stack of books. “I can’t seem to get these to sit in way I can tolerate seeing them. Call it a nesting behavior if you will, but this move has brought out some pickiness I wasn’t aware I had before.”

“Why don’t you just hide the books? That way you don’t see them there.” Thinking she was being helpful, Lucina watched as her mother took her advice to heart and moved the books, but when the woman was back out of her spot moments later to go and get the books and put them back where they’d been before, she felt like she’d done nothing but waste her mother’s time. “Okay, um, why don’t you do school work somewhere else? I’m just trying to help you out, Mom!”

“You’re fine, and I thank you for the suggestions. If I wasn’t tasked with watching you and Owain, I would have already moved into my bedroom to work on this, but…” She trailed off, looking back at the couch with her opened textbook and pens sitting where she should have been, shaking her head at the sight. “It’s okay, I’ve got all the time in the world to get this assignment done, I can put it off until later.”

But when later came and with it came the furniture-laden trio who had gone out shopping, Robin went from trying to do her homework to excitedly helping give directions for where everything that was purchased for the upper floor should be set up. Watching her mother get so invested in once again decorating their home was nice, to a point, and Lucina hoped that once everything was put in place then maybe her mother would get back to how she normally was. After all, her father had toned down his anger and frustration in the days directly following the move, all that stress having rolled off his shoulders and disappeared, so maybe now that the house had proper furniture, her mother would do the same.

But even with all the furniture, it still took weeks for things to actually feel like they were back to normal, given how little time everyone was able to dedicate to making the house really feel like home. It was still jarring to Lucina on occasion when she’d come home from being watched at Maribelle’s place to find that the small apartment that Maribelle called home felt _more_ like home to her than her actual house did. Things were constantly being shuffled around, the couch had moved three or four times because it didn’t feel “right” where it had initially been, and there was no telling if there’d be more things pulled out of boxes and scattered around the house to give it more of a vibe similar to their old home. To Lucina, it was almost as if her parents were trying to make themselves think they hadn’t moved at all, although when she asked her father about it he said that the changed were entirely due to Robin’s inability to let anything sit still for more than a day.

“I think something’s wrong with Mom if she keeps doing this,” Lucina told her father one day, after having woken up that morning to her mother having changed where several different family pictures were hanging. “When does she even do this? When’s she working and going to school and—“

“Don’t worry about it, Lucina. Let her deal with her stresses the way she is, even though I’m not sure what it could be that’s stressing her out so much.” Chrom cast a downward gaze, wistfulness in his breath as he sighed. “You’re going to make me start worrying about her if you keep this up. Let her nest, it’s what she does. She did it before you were born and it’s not too much of a surprise that she’s doing it before Morgan’s born. Speaking of which, mind if I ask you a question?”

The change in topic was jarring, but Lucina figured that if talking about her brother being born made him think of it, it had to be important. “What is it, Daddy?” she replied, trying her best to sound sweet and innocent. “I’ll answer anything.”

“I wasn’t scared you wouldn’t. Your birthday’s coming up and, since you’re getting the one thing you’ve consistently asked for, what do you want this year?” He was perking up as he asked his question, looking to his daughter with a smile instead of a sad expression. “It can be anything, although no promises on being able to get it to you any time soon.”

“Oh, I guess my birthday is soon.” In all honesty, Lucina hadn’t forgotten for a second when her birthday was, but in the craziness following the move and all the changes that came with it she had pushed that thought to the back of her mind temporarily. “I, um, I dunno what I want. Can it _really_ be anything?” Her father nodded, not knowing what the girl was thinking to prompt repeating one of his clarifiers. “Then all I want is dinner and for Mom to not be doing so much and worrying us. Can you get me that?”

Chrom looked at how serious and genuine his daughter was with the request and, chuckling as he did, said, “You know what, I think I can talk to her about it and see what she says, but no promises on her actually listening.”

“That’s all I can ask for, I guess!” the girl replied, hugging her father. “Thank you for at least trying, Daddy. I love that you try to do things for me like that.”

“H-hey, I just do what it takes to make my little princess happy.” Returning her hug, Chrom chuckled again. “Besides, your mother enjoys you being happy as much as I do. We _are_ giving you a brother, aren’t we?” Her face lit up at that reminder, because they were giving her a brother and it was the best present she could have ever asked for. And now that she was asking for a much easier one to have given to her, there was no way she was going to get this request denied. Or, at least, she could hope. Gods, she could (and would) hope.

When her birthday rolled around, she was greeted in the morning with a special-made breakfast that didn’t just include cereal, and she was given a bright pink “birthday girl” ribbon from her aunt that she was expected to wear the entire day. “It’s only your birthday once a year, you know,” Lissa told her as she pinned the ribbon to her shirt, the girl scowling a bit at the color but otherwise fine with the gesture. “I wore my ribbon the whole day on my birthday, the students all loved it and came and visited me a whole lot because of it.”

“But couldn’t it be a better color?” she asked, flicking one of the loose strands on the ribbon once it was in place. “Like, blue, maybe?”

“All the blue ribbons they had said birthday boy on them, we figured you’d appreciate getting one with the correct gender over the wrong color.” Her father was right, even though she wasn’t a fan of the bright pink color, at least it wasn’t going to lead to people teasing her about being labeled as a boy. “Besides, it matches the present we’ve gotten you this year, that you’ll get to open at dinner tonight.”

“I hope it’s not just a box of dolls like last year, I don’t need dolls anymore, Daddy.” Pursing her lips together, Lucina looked sternly at her father, watching as he recoiled at the girl’s seriousness. “It’s dolls, isn’t it?”

“…Perhaps it is, or maybe it’s something better than dolls,” Chrom replied, clearly struggling to come up with an answer. “We’ll just have to see tonight when we’re out at dinner.” Based on his answer, she was fairly certain that the present was exactly what she had guessed, but there was no point in continuing asking about it and trying to get it changed if she was just going to find out the truth that night.

At least, finding out what the present was _had_ been the plan, as evidenced by how many times between breakfast and the ride to school the present had been mentioned as something to be opened at dinner. For the entire day, Lucina wore her birthday ribbon with pride, happily accepting all the wishes of happy birthday from her classmates and her teacher, even enjoying it a little bit when everyone started singing at her. But her mind was focused on getting through the day to dinner, where she’d get the same treatment by her family, and so when she got out of school she was excited to only have to spend a little bit of time, if any time at all, at Maribelle’s place before it was go time.

The first sign that something wasn’t right was noticed the moment she saw Maribelle standing in front of the school building, carrying Brady with her in one arm like she always did. That part was completely normal, but what was different was that she had Owain with her, her hand gripping onto his as he looked around wildly for his cousin. “Um, what’s going on, why’s Owain here?” Lucina asked, approaching her babysitter and the two kids, giving her cousin a wave and getting a small one in return. “Did he wanna come make my birthday better before dinner?”

“This isn’t something we should get into right now, Lucina. Once we’re somewhere other children are not, I’ll explain everything to you to the best of my ability.” Maribelle sounded choked up as she spoke, making the girl worry a bit as to what she had to say. With that in mind, however, the walk back to her apartment building was a lot quicker than normal, Maribelle going as fast as she could and causing poor Owain and Lucina to basically have to run to keep up with her pace.

After taking a quick breather once they’d made it up to the apartment, and once the two boys were put away in Brady’s bedroom to not be present for the conversation, it seemed like it was time for Lucina to hear about what had happened. When she asked about it, though, Maribelle shook her head and said that she wasn’t going to say it quite yet, saying she needed to wait for a bit more news before she said anything at all. “Then why’d we have to run here? That wasn’t a nice thing to do.”

“My apologies, but I had no free hands and if someone, more specifically your aunt, chose to call me at that moment I would have been unable to answer her call.” Taking her normal spot on her couch, Maribelle pulled out one of her law textbooks and had her phone sitting on the armrest beside her. “I’ll be doing some reading until she calls, and after she’s given me an update I will let you know everything.”

“That’s not even fair, but okay.” Sighing and flopping down on the couch next to Maribelle, Lucina flicked at her birthday ribbon again. “It’s my birthday, why can’t I know things?”

“You think what I have to tell you is something happy or fun, don’t you?” When she nodded, Maribelle took in a sharp breath in her newfound understanding of what Lucina was thinking this situation was. “Oh, sweet Lucina, it’s neither happy nor fun. Something very, very bad has happened today and we’re trying to piece everything together before we start telling everyone.”

The girl blinked, looking down at her ribbon. “But it’s my birthday…”

“A birthday doesn’t change the fact that something has gone wrong, my dear. It would be better for someone else to tell you, such as someone who was there when it happened or who is still there now, but they’ve pushed that job onto me for whatever reason.” Maribelle paused, glancing at the girl before looking back to her textbook. “If you had seen the panic in your aunt’s face when she dropped Owain off here, you would know this is no joke.”

“Auntie Lissa was here, and she brought Owain over? But he goes to the school with her, that doesn’t make any sense!” Lucina brought a hand to the side of her head, her eyes going wide as she tried to figure out something that could have prompted that action. “Did someone get hurt too bad at the school, and she needed to not watch him? Is that it?” Shaking her head at the girl’s guess, Maribelle silenced her before she could get another one out due to her phone beginning to ring, her quickly picking it up.

When she started the call with “Oh goodness, Lissa, please tell me everything is going to be all okay for everyone!” and the answer was something to make the woman gasp out and start trembling, Lucina realized that something very bad had indeed happened, although what it was she still didn’t know. “Yes, yes, I know there was so much blood, you repeated that when you were here before, I know you had to deal with something terrible there today but…she’s going to be fine, right?”

“Who’s gonna be fine?” Lucina asked, leaning over to try and hear something on the other side of the phone, but Maribelle pushed her away before she could get anywhere near close enough. “Oh, okay, I guess.”

“Not yet, Lucina, I’m still—oh, so now _you_ want to tell your niece what’s happened?” Giving a “hmph” as she passed the phone into Lucina’s reach, Maribelle gave a quick statement of, “It’s your aunt, please try not to cry into my phone as it doesn’t need any more water damage to it than it’s already experienced.”

Confused as to why she’d be crying, and ignoring the fact that Maribelle was once again sounding on the verge of tears, Lucina pressed the phone up to her ear and timidly asked, “Hello? Auntie Lissa?”

“Oh my gods Lucy you’re not going to like what I’m going to say at all, but I have to say it anyway since I don’t think your dad’s going to be able to say it.” She was rapidly breathing, sounding scared with her every word, and her panic was quickly spreading through the phone to Lucina. “Lucy, something very bad happened today at the school with your mom, and we don’t…we don’t _know_ if your brother is…if he is going to be okay…”

“My brother?” Now Lucina could feel tears welling up in her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

Lucina might not have been crying yet, but it was clear that Lissa was on her end of the call. “W-we don’t know what’s wrong, it’s a lot of guessing and worrying right now, but we do know that either he wants out of your mom, or your mom’s body wants him out, right now. And that’s not good, not even a little bit.”

“Why would that happen?” It was as much as Lucina could bring herself to ask, as her mind tried to work out why it wouldn’t be good. It was April, and her parents had kept repeating that her brother would be born in July; she wasn’t entirely positive on her timeline but she was pretty sure that was a pretty big jump in time. “Auntie Lissa, I don’t get it!”

“It’s…it’s a lot to try and take in at once, Lucina. When you can come see your mom, I think we’ll be able to explain it better. But, um, I don’t know when you’ll be able to see her. We don’t know.” The phone was pulled away on the other end, a second voice picking up in the background that Lucina instantly recognized as being her father’s voice, him sounding just as worried about what was happening as Lissa did. When she started talking into the receiver again, she was actively crying. “We’re so, so sorry about all this, Lucy! Your dad, he’s crying too right now, he says that we could come get you later today, maybe, but…”

“Tell Lucina I love her,” she clearly heard Chrom say in the background, his voice strong even though he was upset. “I love her and I’m so sorry.”

“I think you could’ve heard that, Lucy, but he loves you.” Lissa gave a wavering sigh. “Can you give the phone back to Maribelle now, please? I need to talk to her again.”

She wasn’t going to deny her aunt’s request, and as she handed the phone over to Maribelle’s waiting hand, Lucina felt herself getting more and more upset. All she knew was that something had happened to her mom and to her brother, but what it was she wasn’t getting told, and just knowing that was enough to ruin any and all happiness she’d had about what day it was. Of course something bad had to have happened on the day she so badly wanted things to go great on! “No, I know, it’s really hard to handle this,” she heard Maribelle saying, going right back to her conversation with Lissa. “How horrible it is that she suffers twice when neither of us had to suffer much at all.”

There was most likely more to listen in to with what was being said, but Lucina was starting to cry and the last thing she wanted to focus on in that very moment was what they were talking about. Something was wrong, so very wrong, and she didn’t know the details and she was going to cry about whatever it was that was wrong. “Why’re you crying, Lucy?” Owain asked, unaware of anything that had been said but knowing a little bit thanks to having already seen his mom since things went bad. “Is it what made my mommy cry?”

“She was crying when she brought you here?” Lucina replied, rubbing at a teary eye with a fist that she didn’t want to unclench. When her cousin nodded, she was quick to ask, “Do you know what she was crying about?”

“All she said was that there was so much blood, lots and lots of blood.” Putting a hand over his mouth as he thought about anything else he’d heard, Owain didn’t pay attention to how the words—ones mirroring ones Maribelle had said earlier in the conversation with Lissa on the phone—were making Lucina start to cry harder than she had been. He was unaware that he was upsetting her as he sat there, hand over his mouth, repeating the phrase about the blood over and over to try and jog his memory of what had happened.

She really didn’t need or want him to continue, and when his repetition didn’t stop after a few moments she bolted out of the room, taking solace from the scene in Maribelle’s empty bedroom. That was where she buried her face into a pillow and screamed, crying out all her bad thoughts and feelings on what she’d just learned about for what felt like hours, even though it was just a matter of minutes. She was interrupted by Maribelle coming into the room to find her, sitting next to her on the bed and stroking her hair to try and calm her, saying kind words that were meant to be uplifting and positive.

The fact remained, though, that it was impossible to turn news of a mother and child potentially dying into anything remotely positive, and factoring in that this had happened on Lucina’s birthday was only making it worse. By the time she’d stopped the heaviest of her tears, the other two kids present had come into the bedroom and were trying to understand why their dear Lucy was crying so hard on her birthday, but Maribelle wanted to spare them the details, knowing that Owain would hear them eventually and that Brady wasn’t going to be able to understand them for the most part. She had to keep silent on specifics while the boys were present, leading her to repeat herself in the most vaguest of terms to try calming the distraught girl: “They’re going to be okay, Lucina, no matter what.”

Lucina wasn’t going to believe those words until she saw her mother for herself and would get to meet her perfectly fine brother, and as she didn’t know if or when that was going to happen, there was simply no belief to be had. As the night dragged on and the two kids who didn’t belong there at the apartment stayed there, she was beginning to think that it was so bad that she wasn’t even going to get to go home that night to try and salvage at least a tiny part of her birthday, but that changed sometime after a rushed dinner that Maribelle made for them. It was while they were doing the dishes, a simple task easy enough to try and get Lucina’s mind off the horrible news, that someone knocked at the door. “I’ll get it,” Maribelle said, setting her washcloth down and leaving the kids there to finish up what she’d started. “It might be someone we’re expecting.”

When she came back a moment later, she was tearing up and she had Chrom standing beside her, his face set in stone with a grimace that made Lucina feel bad when she looked at him. “Thanks for watching them while we…were unavailable,” he said with a sigh, opening his arms to motion for his daughter and nephew to come run at him for a hug. Owain gladly took the offer but Lucina hesitated, not wanting to cry all over again. He noticed her reluctance, and so while he was petting his nephew on the head for accepting his hug, he said, “Come on, Lucina. We’ve got somewhere we need to go.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” she eked out, losing herself to crying all over again. She charged at her father, grabbing him with enough force to knock him back a step. “Daddy, what’s wrong with Mom? Why’s she not okay?”

“I-I don’t know, Lucina, that’s what we’re trying to all figure out. Now let’s get out of Maribelle’s hair and get to where we’re needed right now.” Chrom, still stone-faced, gave a small nod of thanks towards Maribelle before turning towards the door, the two kids still clinging to him even as they walked out. “You’re going back to the house,” he said down to Owain, prying the boy off his leg and pushing him towards one door of the car, “where your parents are already waiting for you. As for you, Lucina, we’re going to go visit your mother, to give her a little light in her life tonight.”

Lucina, already opening her own door before her father could help her, didn’t say a word to him until after they’d dropped Owain off and were heading into town even though it was getting dark out. “Daddy, why’s Mom not at home?” she managed to ask, fighting back tears as she saw their house fading out of view. “Why do we have to go somewhere else to see her right now?”

“Because things went very wrong today, Lucina, and that’s all I know about it.” Judging by how he sounded like he was on the verge of tears himself, it was a miracle that neither of them started crying at each other’s words. “Sweetheart, if there was any way to have made this not happen on your birthday, or preferably not at all ever, we would have done whatever we could have. But things went wrong on their own, and now your mother needs to spend some time being taken care of before she can come home.”

“How long’s ‘some time’?” Lucina asked, waiting for her father to give her some vague answer that went in line with all the other ones he’d been giving her.

She was therefore surprised when he had a real answer to say. “If we can get lucky and have our way, not until July. But I doubt we’ll get that lucky, so it’s…” He drew in a sharp breath, bringing a hand from the steering wheel to his mouth to brace himself. “It’s probably not going to be too long. The issue is, the shorter the time it is, the less likely we’ll…ever have a brother to bring home for you.”

Bringing her precious brother up in the conversation was enough to start the waterworks, Lucina crying hard enough to prevent her from saying anything of note for the rest of the ride to the hospital. Even after they’d parked, Chrom made sure to sit in the car with his daughter to let her cry out her feelings, shedding a few tears himself in the process. Once she’d collected herself fairly well they went inside, the cold exterior of the building foreboding and not made any better by the almost colorless interior. After going up a few floors on the elevator, the different buttons having symbols for different departments by them, they came out on a brightly-colored floor that Lucina swore she vaguely remembered for some reason, even though all of her vivid hospital memories revolved around a darkly-colored area.

“Do you remember the time we walked you down here because we wanted you to see the babies?” Chrom asked as he took his daughter’s hand and led her past the glass walls of the nursery. That question answered why she remembered this place, something she was sure to tell her father when it clicked, and as they walked by the small babies she couldn’t help but look inside and wish that she was here to see one of them, not her suffering mother.

The floor they wanted was still a few above the one they were on, but as Chrom explained while they walked, the elevator by the hospital doors didn’t go up to the floor they needed, so he had learned that riding the one up to their current floor would have them walk by the nursery while going to the other one. Although she was thankful that her father thought about her love of babies when deciding how they were going to get up to her mother, Lucina sort of wished he hadn’t bothered with it because now she was longing for getting to meet her brother, and if she never was going to…

Well, she didn’t want to think about that. There was nothing going to be wrong with him and she was going to get to meet him someday, no matter what. “I bet Mom’s gonna love getting to see her birthday girl coming to visit her,” Lucina said when they got into the second elevator and started heading upstairs, this elevator’s button panel having no decorative stickers. “She’ll be so happy, she might cry and tell me happy birthday and all that, and that’ll be nice.”

“I don’t quite think that’s how it will go, Lucina,” Chrom replied, sadness in his voice as he tapped his foot on the ride up. “She’s going to be very tired, and she might not want to talk much. It’s been a long and stressful day for her, and she might just sleep the entire time we’re visiting with her.”

“Why would she do that?” Lucina did understand that something bad had happened, but she hadn’t quite grasped that the bad thing could have been draining to the point of her mother not wanting any sort of conversation. “Why are we visiting if she’s not going to want to talk to us?”

Sighing, Chrom waited for the elevator door to open on their floor and for him and his daughter to be on their way down the hallway before he answered. “Because if she’s awake, she’ll enjoy seeing you, that’s why. We don’t want to drain her any further than she has been today, but if she wants to talk then we’ll stay and talk. I just thought you seeing her once more on your birthday would make you and her both feel a bit better.”

“I feel fine,” Lucina retorted, pretending like she hadn’t been upset and crying about everything that had clearly gone wrong. “Just seeing Mom isn’t going to change that.” She proved herself wrong when they made it into the small room that was their destination, as the sight of her mother laying in the hospital bed half-asleep with all sorts of machines and devices attached to and surrounding her made her burst into loud tears. She broke away from her dad’s grasp, running to the side of the bed and looking at her mother with her actively-crying eyes. “Mom! Mom what’s wrong?”

“Lucina, you got in here after all…” Robin’s voice was soft, showing exactly how tired she was, but she managed to gather the energy to crack a smile in her daughter’s direction, doing no favors to the girl’s crying. “You wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had today, sweetie. It’s been a whole lot of bad things and not many good ones.”

“Bad things like what?” Lucina was trying to focus on her mother and stop her crying, but her attention kept drifting to looking at the different machines there around her, all of which were beeping and humming. “Mom, you’re okay, right?”

The laugh that Robin gave at the question was more breath than sound, before she replied with, “No, honestly, I can’t say that I am. But what matters is that, for the moment, your brother is okay, and that’s all I can ask for right at this moment.”

“I don’t like you saying that,” Lucina bluntly said, reaching for her mother’s hand and, after noticing that there was some sort of tube sticking out of it, quickly retracting her arm and backing away from the bedside. “He’s always going to be okay, because he’s our family. We’re all always okay! Remember when…when we had to be here because of Owain?” Those weren’t really memories Lucina had vivid recollection of, but she knew enough of it with clarity to feel confident in tearfully saying her next statement. “He was all broken and dead and stuff and _he_ ended up okay, so Morgan’s going to end up okay too! And you too, Mom, you’ll be okay too!”

“Please don’t get so worked up in here, Lucina,” Chrom gently scolded, looking at how the outburst had seemed to drain some of the little energy Robin had from her face. “Your mother doesn’t need that right now. She just needs you to be nice and calm.”

“I’m only gonna be calm when I know she’s gonna be okay and that Morgan’s gonna be okay, Daddy!” Stomping her foot into the ground, a hollow echo filling the room at the action, Lucina was actively crying and had given up any attempts of stopping. She balled her hands into fists and pounded one into her leg several times while she tried working out some of her upset feelings in her mind, the end result being that she ended up crying harder than she had been before. “I don’t like this place, and I don’t want to see my mom here!”

“None of us like this place,” both of her parents said, Chrom’s still-stern voice overshadowing Robin’s tired one, and the fact that they both had the same message to give was enough to get Lucina to give a big sniffle and try and start the process of calming down. Since he knew that Robin wasn’t going to be wanting to expend her energy on talking Lucina out of her outburst, Chrom took control of the follow-up words. “We’ve had enough bad experiences in this building to last a lifetime as a family, and it’s only going to get worse as long as your mother’s stuck in here, and as long as Morgan ends up being stuck here after this. We thought a month of this place was bad after that accident? We might be seeing so much longer this time, all to make sure that everyone is okay.”

Her bottom lip trembling, Lucina asked, “So we’re going to have to come here a whole bunch more than just today, even after Mom comes home?”

“I’m afraid so, my princess.” That was when his daughter broke down once more, her attempt at calming down cut short at the news. “Lucina, please don’t cry like this. Coming here more means that things will hopefully end better for everyone, so even if walking into this building almost feels like stabbing myself sometimes, it’s for the best.”

“Chrom, I’m…I’m so tired. I appreciate you bringing Lucina by, but I think I’d like to rest right now. Thank you so much…” Her eyes fluttering closed as she spoke, Robin gave one of the softest sighs imaginable after she’d closed her mouth. Chrom didn’t wait for her to follow-up with anything, knowing that her mind was focusing on how to make herself less tired, so he leaned in and gently kissed her cheek, before wrapping a hand around the base of the back of Lucina’s neck and steering her out of the room.

“Your mother’s had a long day today,” Chrom repeated once they were out in the hall and Lucina had jerked away from him and was looking back as if she’d been taken away without being given proper closure. “What happened to her was a tragedy, and it’s horrible that it happened, but we need to give her the time to rest that she deserves.”

Sighing once she was looking back at her father, Lucina meekly nodded. “I get that, Daddy, but what’s wrong with her? Why’s she here and why’s everything going so badly?”

“It’s…complicated to explain,” Chrom answered, sounding weary as he spoke. “It was almost as if her body suddenly wanted nothing to do with the child inside of it, which I’m sure is impossible for you to think about.” He was watching how Lucina’s eyes had gone wide and were darting back and forth as she tried to make sense of how anything about her mother would want nothing to do with the baby she was having. “There’s a reason we were so hesitant to get involved in this child-having business a second time, and the risk of your mother dying is exactly it.”

She nodded again, blinking just to squeeze her eyes shut and try to push out any tears she might have been holding in. “You’re going to tell me why that is, right Daddy? I…I want to know why it is.”

Chrom inhaled deeply, slowly looking down at his daughter and how she was slowing her pace of following him until he answered her. “Y-yes, Lucina, I will tell you why. Once we’re at home, anyway.” The story loomed over Lucina’s head for the ride home, where her father was completely silent and looked more distressed than she’d ever seen him before, and even after they’d gone into their house (finding the upper floor completely dark and quiet, everyone else having stayed down on their floor) he didn’t seem to be in the mood for saying much of anything to her. But a few minutes after she’d gone into her room, closing her door and flopping onto her bed to cry some more, she heard a knock at the door, followed by it being opened and her father walking in, sitting on the edge of the bed next to her.

“Daddy, you’re going to actually tell me?” she asked, rolling over to look at him, and when she saw him reluctantly nod she sat up, pressing her teary face into his arm. “Oh, please don’t tell me if it’s going to make you sad…”

“I spent the past half-hour talking how to approach this through with Lissa, I think I’m ready to tell you about what’s wrong.” Like before, Chrom’s voice was choked up, and when he spoke again after wrapping Lucina in a big hug he sounded even more despondent. “It all started before you were born, and your mother stressed herself out to the point of almost losing her life—and yours too. We figured that, when she found out she was pregnant again, we would eliminate most of her stresses and everything would be fine. And she, gods, she seemed to be fine, she kept herself from getting too stressed out, and…”

“And what, Daddy?” Lucina was honestly in awe at what she was hearing, although the feelings the news was instilling within her were nothing she enjoyed. Trying to learn about what was wrong with her mother was a lot more painful than she’d thought it would be. “What’s wrong with her now?”

“Earlier today, while she was teaching to cover for someone, she collapsed in class and everything went completely wrong. By the time one of the students had been able to go grab Lissa and bring her to where she was, her body had already started trying to expel a child not ready for this world from it.” Chrom hugged Lucina a bit tighter, her squirming to get closer to him as he did. “The reason she’s there at the hospital right now is so that they can keep an eye on her and keep medicating her to keep him inside her for as long as they possibly can, but the moment they can’t stop him from being born they’re done fighting it. Of course, it would be nice if her body’d just keep him inside naturally, but we’ll take what we can get right now.”

“Are we going to visit her again when she’s less tired?” Lucina asked, looking up at her father as he continued hugging her tightly. When he nodded, she smiled faintly at him. “Okay, I’m okay with that. She needs it, and I need to tell Morgan to stay in there way longer!”

Chrom genuinely laughed at his daughter’s reaction to that part of the news. “That’s the spirit, Lucina. Now you rest up tonight and we’ll see her as soon as she’s feeling up to it. I bet she’ll make it a point to make it up to you that she ruined your birthday like this.”

“She can make it up to me by making Morgan be okay when he is born,” she replied, her smiling coming in a bit stronger. “That’s all I could ever want.” The idea of that being her new birthday wish stayed with Lucina until the next time she saw her mother, telling her that with great excitement and hope in her voice. Robin wasn’t able to promise anything along those lines, but she did tell her daughter with as much certainty as she could manage that Morgan _would_ be okay at some point or another. As she told her that, she was bringing her un-needled hand to her stomach, and as Lucina watched she hoped that her mother was feeling some sort of strong and happy life in there, at least for the moment.

The visits to Robin in the hospital happened every other day over the next two weeks, until the day came that Chrom picked Lucina up from school early, taking her to the hospital without explaining why they were going over a lot earlier than normal. This time, when they went up to the nursery level, normally just a midway destination on their way to Robin’s room, Chrom didn’t walk them past the glass wall and all the sleeping babies inside. He turned them the other way and down a different hallway than one Lucina had ever seen. “Daddy, are we going the right way?” she asked him, because he seemed determined to be going wherever he was leading them. “I don’t think we are…”

“Trust me, Lucina, we are going the exact right way that we need to be. If we’re lucky, we might even—” His voice trailed off as they approached a room door that was slightly ajar, a sticker of blue balloons affixed to its window. While pushing the door open, he continued with a gasp, “—catch them while they’re in here? Gods, where did they get off to?”

“They?” The word tasted odd on Lucina’s lips as she repeated it, before she mimicked her father’s gasp. “Oh gosh, it is Morgan? Is he here?”

Chrom didn’t answer her, only telling her to come inside the room to wait. There was a clearly used bed in there, empty for the moment, which only made what was going on a bit stranger. Lucina was beginning to get convinced that the answer to her question was a strong no, until they’d been in the room for quite some time and the door, which had been closed after they’d come it, was pushed open once more. “I should have figured you’d have brought her here earlier than you should have,” Robin’s quiet voice said as she was rolled into the room, her once again showing a tiredness that seemed to have sank into her bones. “You were told she wasn’t going to be able to see him today, but you brought her anyway.”

“I might have gotten a bit overexcited at the idea of our kids getting to meet,” Chrom admitted, standing from the chair he’d sat in to help his wife get back into her bed from the wheelchair she’d been riding in. “Were you with him just now?”

“Where else would I have been?” Covering herself back up with one of the blankets in the bed, Robin gave a long, content sigh. “For having only thirty-one weeks to grow, he’s surprisingly developed, although he’s clearly struggling to breathe on his own right now. I think it’ll be a long time before he’s home with us, but he’ll get there eventually.”

“I can’t meet my brother right now?” Lucina hadn’t really listened to the details of what her mother had just explained, so the heartbreak of seeing both of her parents nod (Chrom looked a lot more upset about it than Robin did) was far too real to deal with. “B-b-but I’m here and I’m a good kid! I should get to meet him!”

To break the news to her in a gentler way, Robin asked for to come join her in the bed, her climbing up and snuggling up next to her mother and expecting a different answer now that she was so close to her. “If this was a perfect world, you would get to meet him right now and we’d be taking him home tomorrow. But things aren’t perfect and he’s got a lot of growing to do before anyone aside from your father and I can be with him, and the moment that changes we will be sure to get you in that room to meet him face-to-face.”

“I’ll walk Lucina down by the room to show her where he is,” Chrom suggested. “It’ll give her a bit more perspective on why she can’t see him quite yet.” After being told that was a good idea, he got his daughter out of the bed and they left the room, heading back towards the nursery but not going inside. In fact, the door to the room they did want was across from the nursery, the small window the only way to look inside. “He’s in there, in his own little incubator box where he’s going to grow and learn to be big and strong.”

While he was talking, he was pulling out his phone to show Lucina her first picture of her brother, him covered in tubes and machines that obscured most of his tiny face. “That’s my brother,” she said to herself, looking from the picture up to the window into the room. “And he’s in there and I can’t meet him. How unfair is that?”

“It’s very unfair, I know, but the moment you can meet him you will get to. I promise you that.” Chrom put his phone away before picking Lucina up, holding her higher so she could see into the room a bit better. “In the meantime, every time I or your mother see him, we will make sure to tell him all about the loving older sister waiting to meet him.”

“You better! Make sure Morgan will know who I am when I get to go in there and hold him and play with him and—“ Lucina was cut off by being set back down, enraging her a bit, although her dad was already starting to walk away. “Daddy! You didn’t let me stop talking before you walked off!”

He looked back only to tell her, “That’s because I’m going to go sit and talk with your mother some more before she falls asleep, hopefully this’ll be the last night she’s in here and I want to find that out for myself before we leave tonight.” That news was exciting enough to Lucina to get her to skip to catch up with him, grabbing his hand and walking happily back to the room, where the next several hours were spent with nurses coming in and asking various questions and giving updates about Morgan and, much to Chrom’s delight, the state of Robin getting to come home within the week.

Her coming home a few days later wasn’t indicative of when Morgan got to come home, nor was it indicative of when Lucina would get to meet her brother. She’d go along with her parents when they would go to visit him, getting stuck on the outside of the special nursery with one of her parents while the other would sit with the baby for as long as they were allowed to. It bothered Lucina when, a month after he was born, she was still unable to go inside and meet him, to the point that she was beginning to consider refusing to go with her parents when they went.

The day she ended up meeting him, she had grown suspicious that something was different when she woke up to her parents both not being home. It was early in the summer, so school events weren’t any sort of excuse for the absence, especially not when she could hear her aunt and uncle talking loudly downstairs through the opened connecting door. Even though she hadn’t been prompted to, she made her way down the staircase to see her aunt, fully dressed like she was going out somewhere, readying herself to come upstairs. “Oh! Lucina!” she said in shock at seeing her niece in the staircase. “I was just going up to get you, come on, we’ve got somewhere we need to go.”

“I’m not dressed yet, Auntie Lissa,” Lucina replied, looking down at the nightgown she was still wearing. “Here, I’ll go get dressed right now and then you can take me wherever we’re going. Is it where my parents are?”

“I can’t tell you that, silly! Now go get dressed, I’ll be right up!” Giggling much like a child would, Lissa went right back to her conversation as Lucina ascended the stairs, going into her room and changing into some proper clothes as fast as she could. She was completely expecting to have to go back down to remind her aunt they were supposed to be going somewhere, so it caught her by surprise when she opened her bedroom door and Lissa was right there, tapping her foot like she’d been inconvenienced in some way. “Slowpoke, you’re going to make us be late for what’s going to happen,” she teased, leading their way out the front door and down the steps to the driveway. “Hey, Chrom left _his_ car for me after all. Totally called it.”

“Totally called…oh she’s gone.” Lucina watched her aunt run back into the house, this time through the lower level’s front door, and when she came back out it was through the main front door once more. “Where are we going, Auntie Lissa, and why’s it my dad’s car we’ve got to go there?”

Lissa was too busy unlocking the door to let herself in the car to answer, and she never got around to actually telling Lucina what was up, but judging by how she kept laughing to herself about how she was “so right”, the girl could only assume that it was something to do with the yelling she’d heard between her aunt and uncle when she woke up. And if that were the case, it probably was something about the always-enforced rule that Lissa wasn’t allowed, under any circumstances whatsoever, to be anywhere close to behind the wheel of the second truck that Chrom had bought for Vaike. But she wasn’t going to ask again about it, because it was clearly unimportant enough to Lissa that she didn’t answer it the first time.

They pulled into the first parking spot that Lissa saw inside the garage there at the hospital, her making it completely clear that she did not enjoy having to drive them over there by how she kicked the car’s tire and grumbled about how much she wished she wasn’t there at all. “Of course, I’m so happy that I get to be here today,” she added, seeing her niece looking at her with raised eyebrows. “You’ll see why that is when we’re up there, but for now…let’s just go on in and up!”

At that point, Lucina was pretty sure that this was to go see Morgan, but she was beginning to worry that her father had lied to her and that her aunt was going to get to meet him before she was. That worry was almost enough to get her to lead them in the wrong direction but Lissa, having been to the place plenty of times herself, knew exactly how to get up to the special nursery room. When they got off the elevator up, Chrom was standing there waiting for them. “I’m impressed, Lissa,” he said upon seeing his sister there with only Lucina as company. “Never would have guessed you would have been able to drive yourself over here without at least one tagalong.”

“Please, I know how to follow directions, it’s not like I’m a kid or anything.” Rolling her eyes, Lissa put her hands on her hips and leaned forward, trying to intimidate her brother a bit. “Besides, you left your car for me, I didn’t have an excuse to try bringing them.”

“That’s true,” Chrom laughed. “Now I hope you don’t mind that we’re going to make you wait a bit, but there’s something that Lucina’s going to do before you get to.” He held out his hand for his daughter to take, Lissa smiling at them both while Lucina’s mind went into overdrive trying to make sense of what was happening. “It’s finally time for you to get to meet your brother, Lucina.”

“I-I could have guessed that.” The stammer hadn’t been intentional, but as Lucina grabbed her father’s hand and he squeezed it tightly, she felt his excitement flowing into her. “Daddy, is it really time?”

He pulled her a bit closer to him before leading her towards the closed door that, up to this point, she had only been able to peer through the window of. “It is, we got the clearance today and we’re going to make the most of it.” He turned the handle for the door, preparing to push it open, but he lingered to look back to his sister, who was glancing over to the nursery’s glass wall. “Hey now, Lissa, don’t let those babies in there give you _any_ ideas. Morgan’s the last kid in this family, that’s that.”

She laughed off his comment and he cracked a grin at it, opening the door into the sterile room and walking himself and Lucina into it, only to close the door right behind them. It latched with a heavy thud, and immediately someone behind an official-looking desk asked them who they were in there for. Chrom explained the situation and the man at the desk waved them in a direction that they headed in, Lucina too busy looking at all the small babies that were sleeping in their machine-surrounded pods to pay attention to where they were headed. At some point they’d turned a corner, all of the babies disappearing from Lucina’s view, but with the turn of the corner came the entry to somewhere she had only dreamed of before that moment. “Lissa brought her by a lot earlier than I would have guessed she would have,” Robin was heard saying, her voice quiet but full of excited energy.

It was then that Lucina looked to find where her mother was and she saw her sitting in a rocking chair, a small and still-intubated child nestled in her arms. “I’m honestly not surprised, Lissa wants to meet him just as much as Lucina does,” Chrom replied, pushing Lucina closer to her mother, while Robin was bringing herself to her feet. “Go on, Lucina, sit in the chair so you can hold him.”

Speechless, Lucina did as she’d been prompted, taking a seat in the rocking chair and being directed on how to hold her arms before her mother set Morgan down in them. His thin blue hair brushed against her arm, the soft rise and fall of his chest barely noticeable through the tubes coming from his face. His eyes were closed, him fast asleep even as his sister held him, but just having him in her arms was enough to get Lucina to start crying. This was all she’d wanted for so long, to have a brother, and now she was finally getting to hold him for the very first time. It wasn’t that long of a moment, and it was cut short when one of the machines he was still attached to started beeping and a doctor came in to check on him, but it was enough that Lucina would never forget it.

“Isn’t he perfect?” she remembered one of her parents, or maybe both of them at different points, asking her while the doctor was attending to Morgan. “Small, sure, but perfect nonetheless.” All she could manage was a nod, as any words would have been nothing but garbled through crying. He was going to be the perfect brother, and nothing was going to change her mind on that.

* * *

 

The three kids were laying out in the back yarn one summer day, five years after that first time Lucina had gotten to hold Morgan in her arms. The sun, deep in its afternoon decline, was already blocked from their eyes by the house, making their lounging around completely in shade, and like they had done every day since school had let out, the intention was for them to just lay around and not talk to each other, a few minutes of rest in their day.

But with two eager and active boys present, the silence and calm was often hard to come by, and every time Morgan would shoot up to being seated with another random thought to express, Lucina would look over at him and furrow her brows in thought as she contemplated whatever it was he was throwing around. Something she’d been finding herself doing when they were laying out in the yard was going back to old thoughts, thinking long and hard about things that had passed, and her mind would almost exclusively go back to some of the oldest and hardest memories for her to remember.

Whenever Morgan talked, she’d think for a second about how far her little brother had come in so long, the instant version of him coming to mind being the tiny and helpless baby attached to all those tubes and machines in that hospital room she’d rarely been allowed to enter. Then she’d think to him coming home, to him still being so helpless but at least being in the care of the family at home, then to him growing bigger and bigger and stronger and into the little brother she’d always wanted, going from that tiny baby to this big and obnoxious kid currently sitting next to her in the yard. “Lucy, I gotta tell you this idea,” he was saying, reaching to shake her shoulder as she looked at him. “It’s a good one, I know it!”

“Then go on ahead and say it, Morgs, I’m listening to you.” Lucina grabbed her brother’s hand before he could touch her, eliciting a groan from him as his plan had been foiled. “Don’t tell me it was just to touch me, because we’ve gone over why that’s not allowed.”

“But Lucy, Owain lets me touch him when I’m telling him ideas.” Laughing a bit like a maniac, Morgan’s attention turned right to his cousin on his other side, who seemed to have dozed off while laying there in the yard. “C’mon, lemme shake him up! Please Lucy, it’ll be so much fun! Please, please please please!”

“I’m not letting you, sorry. The last time you did that you shook his whole arm too hard and it went numb for hours.” Sighing, Lucina sat up without letting go of her brother’s hand, looking around him to see that Owain was sleeping and therefore couldn’t give his own defense on the matter. “How would you like it if he made your arm go numb by shaking you like you like to shake us? You wouldn’t like it much at all.”

Morgan tilted his head back as he thought about his sister’s offer, before laughing even louder. “I guess I wouldn’t like it, no way! Sometimes Owain says he’s gonna push me down the stairs and if he did that, making his arm go all tingly would be fair then. But not now.”

“You sure are a strange one, Morgs,” Lucina said, letting go of her brother’s hands so that he could excitedly clasp them together. “But if he did push you down the stairs, I don’t think it would be you getting the chance to get back at him. Someone would take care of that long before you would.”

Nodding in agreement, Morgan looked to his sister once more, a grin lighting up his round face. “Yeah, I bet Mommy would be _all_ over taking care of him if he hurt her baby boy. But then Auntie Lissa would be all over her, and then it would just be a big mess and…hey, do you think Mama would like me to catch her some bugs?” His thought had shifted mid-sentence, as it tended to do, which caused Lucina to laugh as she watched her brother jump to his feet and start running around the backyard, his hands out in front of him as he tried to catch a lone butterfly that had drifted into the yard.

Watching him grow up had been an adventure thus far, and she was sure that it was only going to get better from where they currently were. She sighed, laying back down and taking note of a lone cloud that was floating across the sky. “I wish every day could be like this,” she said quietly, raising her arm to trace the outline of the cloud. “It’s so peaceful, there’s no fighting, Morgan’s not being too annoying…”

“You stopped him from shaking me,” Owain added with a yawn as he “woke” up from a nap he never really had been taking. “I don’t think I could handle getting in trouble for being rough with him again, so thanks for that, Lucy. Last time I tackled him for shaking me, your dad threatened to put me through a table.”

“I don’t know _why_ he’d do that, but I’m glad he didn’t, and I’m glad I stopped Morgan before he could do anything. Don’t need you two being mean to each other all summer, when there’s still so much we can do.” Lucina rolled onto her side to look at her cousin, who had done the same to look at her, although his pesky hand was draped over half his face for whatever reason. “Like, we can go to the library—“

“Boring.”

“—go down to the park and meet other kids—“

“Like we do every summer.”

“—or maybe beg our parents to take a big family trip somewhere.” When she wasn’t cut off with that suggestion, Lucina raised her eyebrows at her cousin’s lack of rebuttal. “Do you think that one would be fun? I’ve always wanted to go on a trip somewhere out of this town, but Mother and Father always say we can’t.”

Owain scrunched his nose and shrugged with one shoulder. “It wouldn’t ever happen, knowing your parents and my parents, but it’s worth asking. We’ve been, uh, relatively good kids so far this year, haven’t we?”

“Minus the part where you and Morgan managed to wreck your mom’s birthday cake and blame it on everyone else, yeah, I’d say we have been.” Stifling a laugh as she heard Owain try to come up with yet another excuse for that action, Lucina chose to sigh and roll back onto her back. “It’s a nice thought, but you’re right, it wouldn’t ever happen with who our parents are. I’ve spent enough time around our dads to know that a trip would just be a bad, horrible, terrible idea.”

“Our dads? It’s always your dad that starts things, my dad’s just kind of thrown in whenever it happens.” Owain puffed out his cheeks indignantly at his cousin’s assertion, while she actively laughed at his response. “I wonder why they even pretend to get along sometimes, it’s really bad acting a lot of the time.”

“It sure is,” Lucina agreed, calming her laughter to sigh again. “How’d we get to be part of such a weird family?” Her question wasn’t meant to be answered, and she was sure it wasn’t going to be while she laid there on the grass with her cousin, but the reason for asking it was justified mere moments later, when Morgan started screaming like he’d gotten into some kind of trouble. She shot back up to sitting and quickly pulled herself up to her feet, running to her brother’s side to see him crying in pain with his hands closed around something. “Morgs, what’s wrong?” she asked, putting on a babying voice. “Did you step down weird? There are rocks that could trip you up…”

He responded by opening his hands and revealing a big, ugly wasp that he’d somehow managed to catch, his hands turning red from how many times he’d been stung. “I di-didn’t mean to catch this,” he whined, the wasp stinging him again before flying off. “Lucy it hurt me! Make it stop!”

“Oh, uh, let’s get you inside to see what Mother or Aunt Lissa thinks of this, since they’d know what’s best to do about nasty stings like that.” Patting her brother’s back to try and calm him, Lucina directed him towards the back porch of the house; as they passed Owain, who was still laying in his spot on the ground, she mouthed the words “wasp stings” to him and he rolled his eyes (or, at least, his visible eye).

“On the hands isn’t as bad as some of the places I’ve gotten those before,” he said, watching them head inside. “I mean, ask my mom! She’ll tell you! Me and Brady got stung so bad last summer when we were hiding from his mom…oh man it was so bad!”

“That’s lovely, Owain, but we’re not making this about you right now.” They were at the door, Lucina opening it for her brother because his hands were basically nothing but painful stings by then. “I’m sure Morgan would love to hear your story about you being a stupid kid once he’s done having his turn.”

She made sure to slam the door shut to get her point across to her cousin, that any time her brother needed help she would be first in line to make sure he was okay. After all, he was her baby brother, he meant more than the world to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and there you have it. the end of the story has a KILLER sequel hook in it, doesn't it? almost as if... (see you in two months for the reasoning)


End file.
